‘Ukraine ‘can win’ the war if..’: What Pentagon chief said

US defence secretary Lloyd Austin, after returning from a trip to Kyiv with US State Secretary Antony Blinken said Ukraine can win the war against Russia if it has the right equipment.

“The first step in winning is believing that you can win. And so they believe that we can win,” Austin told a group of journalists after the visit with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

After Russia’s invasion began on February 24, this was the first high-profile visit by the top US officials to Ukraine as they met Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Antony Blinken and Lloyd Austin told Zelensky and his advisers that the U.S. would provide more than $300 million in foreign military financing and had approved a $165 million sale of ammunition.

Austin also said that the United States wants Russia’s military capability weakened so that it cannot carry out another invasion, “We want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine”, he said.

Russia “has already lost a lot of military capability. And a lot of its troops quite frankly, and we want to see them not have the capability to very quickly reproduce that capability,” Austin added.

On April 7 too, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby exuded confidence over Ukraine winning the war, the Pentagon said it assessed that Ukraine could win the war against Russia.

“The proof is literally in the outcomes that you’re seeing every day… absolutely they can win.”, Kirby said.

Meanwhile, air raid sirens were heard across much of Ukraine early Sunday evening, from Lviv in the far west to Odessa on the Black Sea to Kharkiv in the north as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine entered its third month.

Ukraine also proposed on day 61 of war – a “special” round of negotiations with Russia – to be held in the shadow of Mariupol’s Azovstal steel plant to discuss the fate of the civilians and Ukrainian troops still trapped in the city, an adviser to Ukraine’s president said.