Russia-Ukraine war: Russia trying to storm Azovstal plant, says Ukraine; US to give Ukraine $40bn in aid
Ukraine #Ukraine
The US Department of Defence is slamming Vladimir Putin’s public remarks on Monday on the conflict in Ukraine as “the same bluster … falsehoods … untruths”.
In a briefing at the Pentagon on the outskirts of Washington, DC, which is ongoing, DoD spokesman John Kirby urged the US Congress to pass legislation to authorise the huge $33bn (£26.7bn) package of military and economic aid to Ukraine now before it, in order to continue an uninterrupted flow of weapons beyond the end of this month, to assist Ukraine’s resistance to the Russian invasion.
“We urge Congress to add quickly … to keep the flow going,” Kirby said.
The Pentagon spokesman declined to describe the current state of Ukraine-Russia fighting in the eastern Donbas region as “a stalemate”, as queried by a reporter.
“We wouldn’t call it a stalemate in the classic sense,” he said, noting that people typically associate the phrase with first world war trench warfare and fighting without any territorial shift.
There is “a lot of artillery going back and forth”, Kirby said and control of villages changing hands between Russian and Ukrainian forces. But he added: “We don’t see the Russians making a lot of progress and we believe they are behind their own schedule and are not making much geographic gain.”
Meanwhile, Kirby said that Putin’s grievance-laden speech earlier in the day, marking the second world war defeat of Nazi Germany, was marked by “some of the same bluster, some of the same falsehoods … quite frankly, untruths, in terms of his rhetoric that we have heard from the beginning” of the war, when Russia invaded Ukraine on 24 February.
Kirby said Putin talked about the war being a “justified action”. He said: “It is not.” And that the war was provoked by a threatening Ukraine. “No,” he said. And Putin’s claim that it was a timely military action by Russia, to “denazify” Ukraine.
“You know who’s in Ukraine? Ukrainians, not nazis. What we should have heard is how he is going to end this war and get his forces out of Ukraine … a sovereign nation,” Kirby said.
The US once again called “unconscionable” the fact that Russia appears to have forcibly taken many Ukrainians to Russia.
US defence secretary Lloyd Austin spoke to his Ukrainian counterpart earlier in the day.
A note to our blog readers – this is Joanna Walters in New York. The Guardian’s US team has just taken the blog over from our London colleagues and we’ll cover events for the next few hours, as they develop.