Ukraine updates: US won't let Kyiv fail, Pentagon chief says

US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has warned that Ukraine's ability to keep fending off Russian forces is at risk as US urgent aid continues to be held up by lawmakers in Washington.

"Ukraine's survival is in danger," Austin said in a press conference after Kyiv's allies met at the US Ramstein Air Base in Germany's Rhineland-Palatinate state. 

"Our allies and partners continue to step up, the United States must also," he added.

The Republican-run US House of Representatives has so far refused to allow through a bill that has earmarked $60 billion (€55 billion) for Ukraine. Officials have said that the drying up of funding is already being noticed on the ground in Ukraine.

The White House has pledged to continue supporting Ukraine, but it has fallen to European partners to keep the effort going.

Germany announced a new €500 million defense package for Ukraine on Tuesday.

"I have no doubt about the reliability of the Americans," German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said.

"There are particularities in the political systems, and we have to deal with that," he added.

The European Union could take 90% of Russian assets frozen in the 27-member bloc and use them to finance weapons purchases for Ukraine, the EU's foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said Tuesday.

Borrell's plan calls for proceeds from the assets to go to the European Peace Facility, a fund that provides military aid to countries outside the EU and has been used mainly for Ukraine.

"If we do that, well, the Russians will not be very happy," Borrell said. "The amount of money — 3 billion per year — is not even extraordinary. But it is not negligible."

Though leaders of the EU's member states could discuss the proposal at a two-day summit starting on Thursday, they are unlikely to decide on the matter this week.

About 70% of Russian assets frozen in the West are held in the Belgian central securities depository Euroclear and amount to about €190 billion ($206.1 billion) worth of Russian central bank securities and cash. 

While Borrell's proposal calls for the vast majority of proceeds from frozen Russian holdings to pay for weapons for Ukraine, 10% of the funds would go to the EU's central budget.

German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius has announced a €500 million ($543 million) aid package for Ukraine.

The package includes 10,000 rounds of ammunition.

"We have once again put together an aid package worth almost half a billion euros," he said.

Russian authorities are evacuating 9,000 children from the western Belgorod region, Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said.

Belgorod borders Ukraine's northeastern Kharkiv region.

Gladkov said 16 people and almost 100 have been injured in the Belgorod region since last week.

Three people were injured in shelling on Tuesday, Belgorod's governor said.

The announcement comes a day after Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the Kremlin wants to create a buffer zone to help protect border regions from Ukrainian strikes and cross-border raids.

Kyiv's forces have increasingly been striking targets beyond the frontline.

Russia's Defense Ministry says its forces have captured the village of Orlivka in the eastern Ukrainian region of Donetsk.

It lies 9.5 kilometers (5.9 miles) northwest of Avdiivka. Ukrainian forces withdrew from the city last month.

Earlier on Tuesday, the Ukrainian General Staff said that Kyiv's forces had repelled nine Russian attacks around Orlivka.

Ukraine's Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi says that the development of drones is key to giving Kyiv an advantage over Russian forces, which outnumber Ukrainian troops.

"The development of the use of unmanned systems is my priority," Syrskyi said in a post on Telegram. "We are looking for asymmetric solutions to gain a qualitative advantage over a numerically superior opponent."

Both Ukrainian and Russian forces have increasingly employed drones to strike infrastructure in recent months. Moscow has been making gradual gains along the frontline.

In February, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy ordered the creation of a separate branch of the Ukrainian military tasked with developing and managing drones.

Russia has replaced the head of its navy, according to state media.

The former commander of Russia's Northern Fleet, Alexander Moiseyeve, has been appointed acting commander-in-chief of the navy.

He replaces Nikolai Yevmenov, who had held the position since May 2019.

Ukrainian forces say they have destroyed more than two dozen Russian ships since the conflict began in February 2022.

Russia has been forced to move boats from its historic naval base in the port of Sevastopol on the Crimean Peninsula to Novorossiysk in the Krasnodar region of the northern Caucasus.

US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin says that Washington will continue helping Ukraine fight off Russia's invasion.

The "United States will not let Ukraine fail," Austin said at the opening of a meeting of Kyiv's allies at the Ramstein Air Base in Germany's southwestern state of Rhineland-Palatinate.

"We remain determined to provide Ukraine with the resources that it needs to resist the Kremlin's aggression."

A bill that would provide $60 billion (€55.3 billion) in aid for Ukraine is stalling in US Congress over Republican opposition.

Austin said that the US was only able to muster a $300 million stopgap package of assistance for Kyiv by saving on recent purchases by the Pentagon.

"We were only able to support this much-needed package by identifying some unanticipated contract savings," Austin said.

Top US military officer Charles Brown told journalists that Ukrainian forces are "having to pay attention to their supply rates, and how they execute."

Brown said that there is an "incremental kind of back and forth between Ukraine and Russia" with "incremental gains on both sides."

sdi/fb (AFP, Reuters)