WESTERN PERSPECTIVE
US to send more weapons as Ukraine readies offensive
Ukraine's armed forces said they had repelled 45 Russian attacks during the past 24 hours as fighting raged in and around the city of Bakhmut, while Washington pledged more weapons to help Kyiv prepare for a spring counteroffensive.
After weathering a punishing, months-long assault in eastern Ukraine, Kyiv's military commanders have said a counteroffensive is not far off but have stressed the importance of holding towns, including Bakhmut, and inflicting losses in the meantime.
"The question of our counter-attack is under active discussion by American and European political circles - perhaps to excess," said Serhiy Zgurets, director of the publication Defense Express.
Ukrainian diplomats will have to convince allies that a single advance pushing Russian troops back will not be sufficient for victory, he wrote on the Espreso TV website.
"It will mean training our soldiers in NATO member-states, securing the equipment and ammunition we need and planning to determine when and where to start the counter-attack, or if it should be in several places at once."
The United States on Tuesday unveiled $2.6 billion more in military assistance for the government of President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, including three air surveillance radars, anti-tank rockets and fuel trucks. The U.S. has now provided more than $35 billion in military aid to Ukraine since Russia's invasion.
"The main thing is not to lose time, not to lose the chance we have. Act now, help now," Zelenskiy told the U.S. National Governors Association by video link. "Ukrainians act so that Americans don't have to fight - and together we gain new strength for our countries."
The Russian embassy in Washington accused the United States of wanting to drag out the conflict as long as possible, Russian news agency TASS said.
HEAVY CASUALTIES IN BATTLE FOR BAKHMUT
Tens of thousands of Ukrainian civilians and soldiers on both sides have been killed in what Russia calls a "special military operation" to rid the neighbouring nation of Nazis.
Russia has destroyed Ukrainian cities and forced millions of people to flee their homes, and it claims to have annexed nearly a fifth of Ukraine.
The West calls the war an unprovoked assault to subdue an independent country and has provided Kyiv with weapons while seeking to punish Russia with sanctions.
The battle for Bakhmut has been one of the bloodiest of the conflict, with heavy casualties on both sides and the city largely destroyed.
The founder of Russia's Wagner mercenary force, Yevgeny Prigozhin, recently claimed his forces had captured the mining city and logistics hub.
Ukraine has repeatedly denied Russians control the city, while acknowledging they have taken at least half of it.
"In the Bakhmut sector, there was no letup in enemy actions aimed at storming the city of Bakhmut. At least 20 enemy attacks were repelled here alone over the past 24 hours," the Ukrainian general staff said in a report on Facebook.
Near the town of Niu-York, 50 km south of Bakhmut, Ukrainian soldiers in muddy dugouts described repelling Russian attacks on a daily basis.
“They creep in, fire and try to exhaust us. Then they evaluate the situation and can move forward for a little more," commander of infantry unit, who gave his nom-de-guerre as "Bodia" told Reuters. "Meanwhile, we try to let them get closer to us so that we can hit them more precisely.”
Reuters could not verify the battlefield reports.
FINLAND JOINS NATO
Ukraine on Tuesday welcomed the accession to the NATO alliance of Finland, which shares a 1,300-km (810-mile) border with Russia, 13 months after Russia invaded Ukraine, partly in response to what Russia called the alliance's aggressive expansion eastward.
"I congratulate all the people of Finland," Zelenskiy said in his evening address. "Russian aggression clearly proves that only collective guarantees, only preventive guarantees, can be reliable."
Russia's invasion of Ukraine prompted the Finns - after decades of strategic non-alignment - to seek security under the umbrella of NATO's collective defence pact, which states that an attack on one member is an attack on all.
Russia, which has watched successive waves of NATO enlargement since the Cold War ended three decades ago, has also said it would strengthen its military capacity in its western and northwestern regions in response to Finland's accession.
Separately, the Kremlin said Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko would travel to Moscow on Wednesday for two days of talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE
Sanctions against Russia here to stay - Putin
Russian President Vladimir Putin said he believes that the West’s anti-Russian sanctions will remain in place for a long time, so it is necessary to develop measures for the country's sovereign development in the long term.
"We all understand that the sanctions are here to stay, of course, so along with priority measures to replace imported technologies and products, medium-and long-term reforms are needed, aimed at the strategic goals of the country’s sovereign development," Putin said at a meeting of the State Council Presidium on Tuesday.
Many domestic industries found themselves "at the epicenter of the sanctions blockade" when the Western countries opted for a sharp break in trade, economic and cooperation ties, the President recalled.
However, according to him, Russia has managed to "concentrate resources and efforts to ensure the sustainability of the economic situation." Thus, the necessary steps were taken to replace Western products with equivalents made in Russia or in one of its friendly states, "we began to invest heavily in the replacement of imported equipment and software, introducing new mechanisms for preferential and project financing."
According to Putin, "this work was done in an expedited, extremely intense mode." "Now, we are already seeing its positive results. Moreover, we were able to enter a new cycle of economic growth," the head of state stressed.
The President cited the opinion of one of the leaders of the Tulazheldormash plant, which he visited earlier on Tuesday.
"He said:" We were forced to switch to import substitution in areas we had not thought about before. "This phrase is key - we were forced. I think that if we had not been forced, we would never have done this," Putin stressed.
At the Council’s meeting, he proposed to discuss the development of Russia's industry, industrial potential, taking into account external pressure.
** Russian air defenses intercept three US-made HIMARS rockets in Ukraine operation
Russian air defense forces intercepted three rockets of the US-made HIMARS multiple launch rocket system and destroyed three Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicles over the past day during the special military operation in Ukraine, Defense Ministry Spokesman Lieutenant-General Igor Konashenkov reported on Tuesday.
"Air defense capabilities intercepted three rockets of the HIMARS multiple launch rocket system, and also destroyed three Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicles in areas near the settlements of Krasnogorovka in the Donetsk People’s Republic and Kakhovka in the Kherson Region," the spokesman said.
Reuters/TASS
