WEST ADDS SUPPORT, ARMS FOR UKRAINE

U.K. vows weapons as nations push back against Russia

ZAPORIZHZHIA, Ukraine

President Joe Biden spoke in an Alabama factory that built the Javelin missiles Ukrainian soldiers used against Russian tanks. Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain addressed members of Ukraine’s parliament, extolling their “finest hour.” President Emmanuel Macron of France pressed Russia’s Vladimir Putin by phone to end his “devastating aggression.” Germany helped Finland and Sweden — Russia’s Nordic neighbors once wary of provoking Putin — inch closer to joining NATO.

On Tuesday, the leaders of the West sought to capitalize on Russia’s apparent lack of battlefield momentum to show Ukraine support and strengthen its resolve — and its arsenal.

“You have exploded the myth of Putin’s invincibility and you have written one of the most glorious chapters in military history and in the life of your country,” Johnson told President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine and the country’s lawmakers in a video address, the first by a foreign leader to Ukraine’s parliament.

He announced that Britain would provide a roughly $375 million package of additional weapons to Ukraine, including electronic warfare gear, a radar system and GPS-jamming equipment. And he compared Ukraine’s defense to Britain’s resistance to the Nazi onslaught in World War II. “This is Ukraine’s finest hour,” he said.

That display of determination, whether choreographed or coincidental, came as the European Union, often splintered by political and ideological faults, moved toward a united embargo against Russian oil, as the Pentagon described Russia’s offensive in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region as “anemic” and “plodding,” and as British intelligence experts issued damning new assessments of Russian military capabilities.

Biden spoke in Alabama about how the “United States alone has committed more than 5,500 Javelins to Ukraine,” and how the Lockheed Martin missile factory workers were empowering Ukrainians to defend themselves in a battle “between autocracy and democracy.” But for all that talk, the war, now in its third month, increasingly felt like a protracted struggle.

The West, Putin said Tuesday in his call with Macron, should stop supplying weapons to Ukraine, as they were contributing to “atrocities.” Peace seemed far out of reach, with Putin accusing Ukraine of an “unwillingness” to negotiate seriously, according to a Kremlin description of the call.

But U.S. military and political leaders, once apprehensive about goading Putin into an escalation, in recent days have explicitly stated a goal of weakening the Russian military and Putin’s ability to invade other countries.

In Brussels, Prime Minister Mario Draghi of Italy said the Russian aggression had called into question the “greatest achievement of the European Union: peace within our continent.” He said Russia had violated that peace and basic respect for human rights “in Mariupol, in Bucha, and in all the places where the Russian army unleashed its violence against unarmed civilians.”

Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany promised to back NATO membership for Sweden and Finland, which have suggested they want to join.

“They can count on our support,” Scholz said at a joint news conference with the Finnish and Swedish leaders.