Participating via video conference at the Yalta European Strategy forum held in Kyiv, White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan assured that President Biden, who will meet with his Ukrainian counterpart at the end of September during the UN General Assembly of New York, “is determined to use the last four months (of his term) to put Ukraine in the best possible position to win.”
“Difficult Logistics”
While Volodymyr Zelensky and other Ukrainian leaders continue to decry the delays in Western and especially American military assistance, Jake Sullivan assured that this problem is due to difficult logistics and not a lack of political will to support Kiev.
“It is not a matter of political will. It is a difficult and complicated logistical question […] to deliver this material to the front,” he said.
Prisoner exchange
On Saturday, the Russian Defense Ministry said 103 Russian servicemen taken prisoner in the Kursk region had been exchanged for the same number of Ukrainian prisoners of war.
According to the Russian ministry, the UAE made “mediational efforts” to allow this exchange to take place.
On Telegram, Volodymyr Zelensky indicated on Saturday that the exchange allowed the release of Ukrainian soldiers and policemen who defended Kiev, Donetsk, Mariupol and its Azovstal plant, as well as Luhansk, Kharkiv and Zaporizhia regions.
The day before, Volodymyr Zelensky announced that 49 Ukrainian prisoners had returned from Russia. On August 24, Moscow and Kiev exchanged 230 prisoners, including Russian soldiers captured in the Kursk region.
In a separate statement, the Russian military said Saturday it was continuing “offensive operations” in the Kursk region. On Thursday, she announced for the first time that she had regained ground there during a counterattack.
And she claimed on Saturday capturing a new village in the Ukrainian region of Donetsk, that of Jelanne Perche, in the Pokrovsk district, an important logistical node threatened by Moscow.
Ukraine launched a surprise attack in Russia's Kursk region on August 6. It hoped to force Moscow to redeploy its troops to the Donetsk region and thus slow their advances.
“It's all about funding”
On the diplomatic front, Volodymyr Zelensky is still asking his allies to allow him to strike military targets deep on Russian soil.
But so far, the West, led by the Americans, is hesitant to give it a possible green light Kiev's use of long-range missilesfearing that such a decision could be seen by Russia as an escalation.
Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that if the West allowed Ukraine to strike Russian territory with longer-range missiles, it would mean “NATO countries are at war with Russia”.
Volodymyr Zelensky, for his part, accused his allies on Friday of being “afraid” to create the possibility that they themselves could shoot down Russian drones and missiles in Ukrainian skies. Kiev indicated on Saturday that it had shot down another 72 Russian drones overnight.
Currently, Washington allows Kiev to strike only Russian targets in the occupied parts of Ukraine and some in the border regions with Russia directly related to military operations.
In Kiev, an adviser to President Zelensky on strategic affairs, Oleksandr Kamyshin, also assured that his country is capable of producing more weapons itself, but lacks the necessary funding. : “The limit is not in our production capabilities, it's all about funding. »
Ukraine's armaments still rely primarily on Soviet stockpiles and those supplied by its Western allies. But it has drastically stepped up its own weapons production since the beginning of the Russian invasion.