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U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is in Brussels to host a meeting Thursday of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, which includes ministers from almost 50 countries assisting Kyiv’s war efforts. Austin praised Ukrainian “resilience” and pledged that the United States “will stand with Ukraine for the long haul.”
He said military equipment and training would continue to flow, ensuring that Kyiv can “prevail over [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s campaign of cruelty and conquest.” He also met with his Ukrainian counterpart. “Ukraine’s fight is a marathon and not a sprint,” Austin noted in opening remarks at the conference.
Senior Pentagon officials said they expect a lengthy and “very violent” fight during the counteroffensive launched by Ukrainian forces to drive out Russian troops, speaking candidly from NATO headquarters in Brussels on Thursday.
Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said it would be “very premature” to try to put an end date on the counteroffensive, noting that the battle will “likely take a considerable amount of time — and at high cost.” Austin noted that photographs of Western combat vehicles damaged in battle have cropped up, but said Ukrainian forces are able to recover and repair the equipment.
Here’s the latest on the war and its impact across the globe.
Zaporizhzhia steel plant refuses to bend to Russian attacks: Workers at a steel plant near the front lines of a counteroffensive in southeastern Ukraine aren’t cowed by the air raid sirens that regularly sound as they work with molten metal at temperatures up to 1,100 degrees Celsius, The Post’s Adam Taylor reports.
“People just adapted,” 29-year-old Oleksii Klashnik said. He and other steelworkers wore protective vests along with their heatproof outfits. The plant has never been hit, Klashnik added, but “you can definitely hear the explosions in the city.”
David Stern contributed to this report.
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