Stoltenberg sees “progress” in the Ukrainian counterattack – DW – 06/13/2023

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told US President Joe Biden on Tuesday (06.13.2023) that Ukraine He is “making progress” on his own Counterattack against Russia He argued that such progress showed the importance of NATO agreeing to more military aid to Kiev at its upcoming leaders’ summit in Vilnius.

Stoltenberg made the remarks during a meeting with Biden in the Oval Office of the White House, as Ukraine launches a counteroffensive to take back some of the territory Russia has occupied since its invasion began in February 2022.

“The apoyo que nosotros le estamos dando a Ucrania ahora está marcando la diferencia en el campo de batalla. Mientras hablamos aquí, los ukranianos están haciendo progresos en la ofensiva que han lanzado”, he congratulóltenberg ante los medios de comunicación al inicio de la meeting. “It’s still early days, but we know that the more territories the Ukrainians liberate, the more power they will have when it comes to negotiating,” he added.

In this way, Stoltenberg formulated in the words the strategy that NATO, and especially the United States, have applied in recent months: Billions of dollars in military aid to Ukraine To advance on the battlefield and force final negotiations with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Earlier today, the United States announced a The new military aid package to Ukraine at a value of 325 million dollars.

Russia admits to fighting the counterattack

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday that Ukraine’s counterattack is suffering “catastrophic” losses, as Kiev makes its first gains. This is the second time since Friday that the Russian president has claimed this His army repels the counterattack Ukraine prepared it for several months, with the support of Western weapons.

And Putin declared, during a meeting with journalists covering the conflict, that “their losses are approaching a level that we can describe as a catastrophe,” and confirmed that Russian material losses are “ten times less.” According to him, Kiev lost “about 25%, or maybe 30%, of the equipment” provided by the Westerners, so that 160 tanks and more than 360 armored vehicles were taken out of service. And from the Russian side, he admitted the loss of 54 tanks, some of which were repairable. The mentioned data cannot be compared with independent sources. Russia talks little about its losses.

Institutions of higher education (EFE, AFP)