"Ukraine's fight for freedom is a marathon, not a sprint,"

 

"Ladies and gentlemen, Ukraine is fighting for its life,"

 

 The Pentagon-led Ukrainian Defense Contact Group meets virtually this morning, followed by a press conference at the Pentagon with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Joint Chiefs Chairman Army Gen. Mark Milley.

Today is the 14th time the group has convened. The last meeting took place in Belgium, and involved discussions on how to train Ukrainian pilots on F-16s after training conducted by Dutch and Danish troops sometime in the future.

"Ukraine's fight for freedom is a marathon, not a sprint," Austin said Tuesday in his opening remarks. "So this Contact Group has come together again to stand up for some crucial shared principles—sovereignty, human rights, freedom, and a refusal to live in a world where big countries can just invade their peaceful neighbors and redraw borders by force," he added.

"Ladies and gentlemen, Ukraine is fighting for its life," Austin continued. "This is a profoundly important moment in the history of this war and of this century, and the United States will stand with Ukraine for as long as it takes," he said.

Developing: The U.S. will send another $1.3 billion in weapons to Ukraine, including VAMPIRE counter-air defense systems, Switchblade and Phoenix Ghost drones, and counter-drone systems made by Australia's DroneShield Ltd., according to Reuters, reporting Tuesday morning.  


The Ukrainian military's most urgent needs include air defense and ammunition resupply, the Pentagon said after Austin's Monday phone call with his Ukrainian counterpart Oleksii Reznikov. Beyond that, Austin will be working on lining up enough "support and sustainment for Ukraine over the long term" to help them through the coming weeks and months, according to the Pentagon's readout.

"I thanked Secretary Austin and the American people once more for the supply of cluster munitions," Reznikov said on social media after that phone call. "We will use them wisely, with caution, and in strict accordance with previously-specified conditions," he promised.

Ukraine says a U.S.-provided Bradley Fighting Vehicle recently destroyed two Russian T-72 tanks. The Bradley "is equipped with a heavy TOW (Tube-launched Optically-tracked Wire-guided) anti-tank missile, which the crew skillfully used," Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar wrote Tuesday on Telegram.

"Western equipment is a magnet for the enemy," she added, "and as soon as a Bradley appears on the front line, the Russians use everything they have— from grenade launchers to artillery and attack helicopters."

The latest from the battlefield: "By and large this is an infantryman's fight," which means its largely focused on the squad, platoon and company level while being "supported by artillery along most of the frontline," said defense analyst Franz-Stefan Gady after a recent trip to Ukraine with several other academics.

However, Ukraine doesn't have nearly enough de-mining equipment, air defenses, or anti-tank weapons, Gady said. In the meantime, Ukraine's military has "switched to a strategy of attrition relying on sequential fires rather than maneuver," he said. "This is the reason why cluster munitions are critical to extend current fire rates into the fall: weakening Russian defenses to a degree that enables maneuver."

But perhaps most urgently, Ukraine still can't efficiently coordinate the many different units needed to collaborate simultaneously for what's known as combined arms warfare, said Gady. "Lack of a comprehensive combined arms approach at scale makes Ukrainian forces more vulnerable to Russian ATGMs, artillery etc. while advancing. So it's not just about equipment."

"There's simply no systematic pulling apart of the Russian defensive system that I could observe," he admitted, and added that he doesn't anticipate those conditions will change anytime soon. "Absent a sudden collapse of Russian defenses, I suspect this will remain a bloody attritional fight with reserve units being fed in incrementally in the coming weeks and months," said Gady.