President Biden, in his address to the UN General Assembly, said: “We will stand in solidarity with Ukraine. We will stand in solidarity against Russia’s aggression. Period.” The comments came hours after Putin, in a speech broadcast early Wednesday, announced plans to mobilize some 300,000 Russian reservists to the front and hold “referendums” in Ukraine’s occupied territories that could herald a broad annexation of Ukrainian land. Should Russia’s territorial integrity and people be threatened, Putin warned, “We will certainly use all the weapons systems at our disposal. This is not a bluff.” The escalation, analysts said, represents an attempt by Moscow to freeze its gains in eastern Ukraine and prevent further Western support for Kyiv, before it loses any more land it holds to a Ukrainian force that has seized the initiative in recent weeks. It is also an attempt by Putin to solve a problem with troop numbers that prevents Russia from conducting offensive operations and risks a further collapse of its battlefield positions. Rapid ground loss in Ukraine reveals a spent Russian military Kyiv has said that orchestrating organized referendums and annexations will not prevent Ukrainian forces from retaking the country’s territory. “Russia wants war — it’s true. But Russia will not be able to stop the course of history,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a pre-recorded speech at the United Nations on Wednesday night. The White House said the flow of arms to Ukraine would continue. “We will continue to support Ukraine with security assistance and other financial assistance, as the president has said, for as long as it takes,” John Kirby, coordinator of strategic communications at the White House National Security Council, told ABC News in an interview. . “This is Ukrainian territory. It doesn’t matter what mock referendum they do or what vote they do. It is still Ukrainian territory.” Kirby denounced Putin’s nuclear threat as irresponsible, warning of serious consequences if Moscow used such weapons in the conflict. Kirby said the United States is monitoring Russia’s nuclear complex and sees no reason at this point for Washington to change its strategic posture. Kori Schake, director of foreign and defense policy at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, who visited Kyiv last week, said the Russian reinforcements would take months to train and deploy and would not necessarily change the outcome of the war. He noted that Putin’s threats to use nuclear weapons do not register in the same way in Ukraine, after months of fighting, as they do in the United States. “There, I was struck by the unanimity and the attitude among both government people and civil society that Russia using a nuclear weapon in Ukraine would not change the outcome of the war,” he said. “They would just increase the cost.” In response to Putin’s nuclear threat, European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell called an emergency meeting Wednesday afternoon of EU foreign ministers. He said he expected an EU response to Putin’s remarks at the UN Security Council meeting on Thursday on Ukraine, which Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is due to attend along with Foreign Minister Anthony Blinken. “What President Putin announced today is another major escalation in unprovoked war,” Borrell told reporters at the United Nations. “He seemed to be speaking out of some degree of panic and desperation…by threatening to use nuclear weapons, he is trying to intimidate Ukraine and all the countries that support Ukraine. But it will fail. It has failed and will fail again.” If Putin formally annexes the occupied territories held by his military, he could label future Ukrainian military operations as attacks on Russia itself, giving him permission to take more extreme measures in response and rekindle the nuclear threat. Russian doctrine allows for a nuclear response to a conventional attack that threatens the existence of the state. Battle for Kyiv: Ukrainian bravery, Russian blunders combine to save capital Although Russian draftees are technically barred from being sent to war zones like Ukraine, they could be deployed in the occupied territories if Moscow considers the territories part of Russia. Putin’s nuclear saber swing, analysts say, is an attempt to make Ukraine’s Western backers think twice about allowing Kyiv to inflict a resounding Russian defeat on the battlefield for fear of the potential consequences. “It’s designed to get us to send less to Ukraine and certainly not to increase the amount of aid we provide both in quantity and quality,” said John E. Herbst, former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine and director of the Center Eurasia of the Atlantic Council. . He argued that the administration should provide long-range missiles, tanks, air defense systems and fighter jets — weapons the administration has so far refused to send — to ensure Ukraine’s victory regardless of Russian threats. Biden declined to elaborate on how the United States would respond to the use of a nuclear weapon in Ukraine, saying only: “It will be consequential. They will become more pariahs in the world than ever before. And depending on the extent of what they do, that will determine what response there is.” His administration has made preventing any risk of direct conflict with Russia a cornerstone of its policy response to the conflict. According to a congressional official familiar with the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters, the United States will continue to provide Kyiv with more of the same weapons that helped Ukraine beat Russian forces, but is not”. to immediately consider new types of weapons. A senior US official said it was unlikely that Putin’s announcement would do anything other than “steel resolve for continued support” in the defense of Ukraine within the government. The government’s decision to supply Ukraine with High Mobility Artillery Missile Systems (HIMARS) has significantly changed the situation on the battlefield this year in favor of Kiev. Previously, Ukrainian forces suffered territorial and personnel losses because they were outgunned by longer-range Russian artillery. Putin’s partial mobilization will help appease nationalist hardliners at home, who are calling on the Kremlin to unleash all of Russia’s might against Ukraine. But the move also risks internal discontent in other regions as Russia calls up reservists and sends them on a mismanaged military campaign, in some cases against their will. It’s a “sign of desperation,” said Dmitry Gorenburg, who studies Russian security issues for CNA, a defense research group in suburban Washington. Gorenburg noted the confluence of several worrying factors for Putin in recent days, including the stunning destruction of the Russian military in northeastern Ukraine, the lack of support for Putin during last week’s international security summit in Uzbekistan and the creation of of frustration over the failures of the Russian military among others. extreme Russian nationalists. Russia will likely use the additional forces in an effort to shore up units in Ukraine that have already suffered heavy combat losses, rather than attempting to create new units for deployment, Gorenburg predicted. That, he said, could be accomplished more quickly and could help the Russian military dig in where it is, even if it is unlikely to return to the offensive. “I’m not convinced it’s going to work everywhere,” Gorenburg said. “And even with relatively limited training, it will take a few weeks for people to get there.” The result is an opportunity for Ukrainian forces to try to launch their counterattack as aggressively as possible before any Russian reinforcements arrive. The Ukrainians are steadily chipping away at Russian defenses outside the southern city of Kherson and in the northern part of the Donetsk region. Karen DeYoung contributed to this report.
War in Ukraine: What you need to know
The last: Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a “partial mobilization” of troops in an address to the nation on September 21, describing the move as an effort to defend Russian sovereignty against a West that seeks to use Ukraine as a tool to “divide and destroy Russia. .” Follow our live updates here. The battle: A successful Ukrainian counteroffensive forced a large Russian retreat in the northeastern region of Kharkiv in recent days, as troops abandoned towns and villages they had seized since the first days of the war and abandoned large amounts of military equipment. Annexation Referendums: Staggered referendums, which would be illegal under international law, are to be held from September 23 to 27 in the breakaway regions of Luhansk and Donetsk in eastern Ukraine, according to Russian news agencies. Another organized referendum will be held by the Moscow-appointed government in Kherson from Friday. Photos: Washington Post photographers have been on the ground since the start of the war — here are some of their strongest works. How you can help: Here are ways those in the US can help support the Ukrainian people as well as the donations people have made around the world. Read his full coverage Russia-Ukraine crisis. Are you on Telegram? Subscribe to our channel for updates and exclusive video.
