Link to Ukrainians cut as strategy questioned
U.S. continues to back Zelenskyy’s desire to fight on
The last bridge to the last city standing between the Russian army and control of easternmost Ukraine has collapsed as soldiers engaged in pitched street battles for what little is left of the city and scores of civilians remained stranded under unrelenting bombardment.
Even after the final remaining bridge between the city, Sievierodonetsk, and Ukrainian-held territory to the west was toppled, Ukrainian officials insisted that supplies could still reach their soldiers fighting in the ruined city. But evacuating civilians and wounded troops may become far more challenging, and it appeared increasingly unlikely that the city’s defenders could hold out for long.
Almost four months after the forces of Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, attacked, Ukraine has been largely reduced to harrying the betterequipped invader, making each patch of ground as bloody for it to win as possible, but failing in recent weeks to secure any decisive victories.
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, insists that his country may yet prevail if it is given more powerful weaponry, but as Western military leaders prepared to meet in Brussels on Wednesday and Thursday, some officials sounded dubious.
Still, American officials appeared at pains Tuesday not to overstep.
“We’re not going to tell the Ukrainians how to negotiate, what to negotiate and when to negotiate,” Colin H. Kahl, undersecretary of defense for policy, said at a security conference in Washington. “They’re going to set those terms for themselves.”
The fall of Sievierodonetsk would put Putin an important step closer to seizing Ukraine’s industrial heartland, the eastern Donbas region, where he has directed Russia’s assault after failing early in the war to take the largest Ukrainian cities.
Destruction of the bridge raises the risk to Ukrainian forces of being trapped in Sievierodonetsk. But it could also complicate the Russian advance, making it more difficult to mount a frontal assault on Lysychansk, which lies on higher ground; an attack would require the Russians to expose their troops while crossing the river below.
Zelenskyy’s government has asked the West for a vast increase in sophisticated weapons and tools. The increasingly desperate pleas appeared likely to put added pressure on 40 Western allies when they meet in Brussels.
Some Western officials say Zelenskyy may not have a viable strategy to win the war.
But for now, at least publicly, the United States is endorsing the Ukrainian desire to keep up the battle.
Some leaders in Central and Eastern Europe have strong views about the need to teach Russia a painful and lasting lesson — with some going as far as to reject the idea of even speaking to Putin.
But France, Italy and Germany are anxious about the prospect of a prolonged, stalemated war that raises the risk of drawing NATO into the fighting and would further damage their economies .
The European Union is seriously considering starting Ukraine along a path to membership, which diplomats say might help entice Ukraine into agreeing to a negotiated end to the fighting.