KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia unleashed a string of attacks against Ukrainian rail and fuel installations Monday, striking crucial infrastructure far from the front line of its eastern offensive.
Meanwhile, two fires were reported at oil facilities in western Russia, not far from the Ukrainian border. It was not clear what caused the blazes.
As both sides in the 2-month-old war brace for what could be a grinding battle of attrition in the country’s eastern industrial heartland, top U.S. officials pledged more help to ensure Ukraine prevails.
In a bold visit to Kyiv to meet with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Sunday, the American secretaries of state and defense said Washington had approved a $165 million sale of ammunition — non-U.S. ammo, mainly if not entirely to fit Ukraine’s Soviet-era weapons — along with more than $300 million in financing to buy more supplies.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Monday after the meeting that the West’s united support for Ukraine and pressure on Moscow are having “real results.”
“When it comes to Russia’s war aims, Russia is failing. Ukraine is succeeding,” he added.
In an interview with The Associated Press, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba welcomed the American support but said that “as long as Russian soldiers put a foot on Ukrainian soil, nothing is enough.”
Kuleba warned that if Western powers want Ukraine to win the war and “stop Putin in Ukraine and not to allow him to go further, deeper into Europe,” then countries must speed up the delivery of the weapons requested by Ukraine.
Russian President Vladimir Putin accused the U.S. and its allies of trying to “split Russian society and to destroy Russia from within.”
When Russia invaded on Feb. 24, its apparent goal was the lightning capture of Kyiv and perhaps the toppling of its government. But the Ukrainians, with the help of Western weapons, bogged Putin’s troops down and thwarted their push to Kyiv.
Moscow now says its goal is to capture the mostly Russian-speaking Donbas region in the east. While both sides said the campaign in the east is underway, Russia has yet to mount an all-out ground offensive and has not achieved any major breakthroughs.
Ukrainian troops holed up in a steel plant in the strategic city of Mariupol are tying down Russian forces and apparently keeping them from being added to the offensive elsewhere in the Donbas.
Britain said it believes 15,000 Russian troops have been killed in Ukraine since Moscow began its invasion. Defense Secretary Ben Wallace said 25% of the Russian combat units sent to Ukraine “have been rendered not combat effective,” and Russia had lost more than 2,000 armored vehicles and over 60 helicopters and fighter planes.
Ukrainian officials have said about 2,500 to 3,000 Ukrainian troops had been killed as of mid-April.
Over the weekend, Russian forces launched new airstrikes on the steel plant in a bid to dislodge the estimated 2,000 fighters. Some 1,000 civilians were also sheltering in the steelworks, and the Russian military pledged to open a humanitarian corridor Monday for them to leave.
