Speaking to a group of journalists at the Pentagon, the senior defense official said that it was impressive that the Ukrainian army was slowing down the Russian army with US weapons.
“The 240 million dollar part of the 350 million dollar security aid package, including Javelin missiles, which was last approved to be supplied to Ukraine, was smuggled into Ukraine and delivered,” the official said.
Noting that the Russians did not attempt to prevent this weapon package and that all aid would go to Ukraine in the coming days, the official said that 14 more countries provided weapons to the Ukrainian army.
The senior official did not share details about these countries and the weapons they supplied.
Regarding the training of the weapons given to the Ukrainian army, the official said:
“We have carried out a comprehensive training program with the Ukrainian Armed Forces so far. Thus, we were able to adapt the equipment we provided to the Ukrainians according to the training they had received before. We gave the training on some of the new equipment we last provided in December, January. But the majority of what we provided was already familiar with weapons and equipment. They’re already using it effectively.”
UKRAINE MAINTAINS A SIGNIFICANT SECTION OF AIRPOWER
Emphasizing that Russia has not yet made any progress in its attack on Kiev, the Pentagon official said that conflicts continue in other parts of Ukraine.
Evaluating the capacity of the Ukrainian Air Force, the official said:
“I would say that the Ukrainians still have a significant majority of their air combat power in terms of both fixed-wing and floating-wing aircraft, drones and surface-to-air defense systems. They still have most of these systems, these platforms and this capability, but I really don’t want to quantify that. “They suffered some losses in all of these categories. Some of these losses were due to failure only, some from Russian attacks. However, we assess that they have a significant majority of air combat power.”
MILITARY COMMUNICATION BETWEEN USA AND RUSSIA
Answering a question about whether the mechanism to prevent conflicts between the US and Russian armies is working, the senior official said that the mechanism in question is an open phone line only at the headquarters of the European Forces Command.
The official stated that he knows that the line has been established recently and has only been tested with the Russians, but he does not know whether it has been used so far.
“TRYING TO BUY NUCLEAR PLANTS WITH A WEAPON IS INCREDIBLE”
The official, who gave information about the fire at the Zaporizhia Nuclear Power Plant, known as one of the largest nuclear power plants in Europe, said that there was no radioactive leak, but they could not yet determine how the fire broke out there.
The official made the following comments:
“Let alone the reason for this invasion, there is no reason for the Russians to be reckless to engage in kinetic attack and conflict around a nuclear power plant. Nuclear power plants are not built to withstand armed conflict. There is no radioactive leakage and the Russians have taken control, but this operation has It just doesn’t justify it. It shows how reckless the Russian occupation was in taking a nuclear power plant by force.”
