Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Three senior U.S. security officials held a video call with a bunch of their Ukrainian counterparts to debate military aid to Kyiv, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s chief of staff said on Saturday.
“We discussed the further provision of needed assistance to our country, specifically vehicles, weapons and ammunition,” Andriy Yermak wrote on Telegram.
Yermak said he, Ukraine’s Defence Minister Oleksii Reznikov, top general Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, and a number of other other senior commanders and officials had attended the meeting.
U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, top military commander Mark Milley, and the White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan represented the opposite side.
Yermak didn’t give details of specific requests to the U.S. side.
The meeting took place as Kyiv seeks to collect sufficient supplies of arms from its Western backers, of which the U.S. has been essentially the most significant, to mount a counter-offensive and take a look at to take back territory captured by Moscow last yr.
Yermak added that Zelenskyy had joined the meeting at the tip to present his views on the liberation of Ukrainian territories occupied by Russia since its invasion nearly 13 months ago.
“We briefed our allies intimately in regards to the current situation on the front, combat operations in essentially the most difficult areas, in addition to the urgent needs of the Ukrainian army,” Yermak said.
Ukrainian forces continued on Friday to resist Russian assaults on the ruined city of Bakhmut, the focus for eight months of Russian attempts to advance through the commercial Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine bordering Russia.
