According to a key adviser, US President Joe Biden wants to use his remaining term in office to give Ukraine the best possible position in the conflict with Russia. Biden wants to put Ukraine “in the best possible position to prevail” in the next four months, said White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan on Saturday at the Yalta European Strategy (YES) conference in Kyiv.
Ultimately, the war between Russia and Ukraine must be ended through negotiations, “and it is important that they are strong in those negotiations,” said Sullivan. It is up to the Ukrainian government to decide when the time has come for talks between Kyiv and Moscow. According to Sullivan, a meeting between Biden and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is planned on the sidelines of the general debate of the UN General Assembly in New York at the end of September.
US President Biden will be replaced in January either by his current deputy Kamal Harris, who has announced further support for Ukraine – or by former President Donald Trump, who declined to comment during a televised debate a few days ago on whether he wanted Ukraine to win the war with Russia.
Despite pressure from Ukraine, Biden and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer postponed a decision on whether to allow Kyiv to use long-range Western weapons against targets in Russia at a meeting at the White House on Friday. Russian President Vladimir Putin had previously warned that such permission would mean that NATO was “at war” with Russia.
The leadership in Kiev is pushing for the ability to use longer-range Western weapons against targets in Russia. The new Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiha said it was important to “lift all restrictions on the use of American and British weapons against legitimate military targets in Russia.”
At the strategy conference in Kiev, Ukrainian intelligence chief Kyrylo Budanov expressed concern about North Korea’s support for Moscow in the war. Pyongyang is supplying Moscow with huge amounts of ammunition in the fight against Ukraine. This has a direct impact on the battlefield.
The Russian Defense Ministry reported on Saturday that another village had been captured near the strategically important city of Pokrovsk in eastern Ukraine. The previous day, Ukrainian President Zelenskyj had spoken of a “very difficult situation” on the eastern Ukrainian front. US security adviser Sullivan said on Saturday that the region around Pokrovsk was “particularly worrying.”
At the beginning of August, Ukraine launched a surprise advance into the Russian border region of Kursk and, according to government sources, conquered several hundred square kilometers of territory. The aim was apparently to tie down Russian troops and thus slow down Russia’s advance in eastern Ukraine. According to Moscow, the Russian army has now been able to recapture areas in the Kursk region.
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