Responding to a reporter’s question about the status of the city at the Group of Seven summit in Japan, Zelenskyy said: “Bakhmut is not occupied by the Russian Federation as of today.”

Ukraine’s Zelensky at G7 summit as world leaders sanction Russia

“We are not throwing people (away) to die,” Zelenskyy said in Ukrainian through an interpreter. “People are the treasure. I clearly understand what is happening in Bakhmut. I cannot share with you the technical details of what is happening with our warriors.”

The fog of war made it impossible to confirm the situation on the ground in the invasion’s longest battle, and a series of comments from Ukrainian and Russian officials added confusion to the matter.

Zelenskyy’s response in English to a question earlier at the summit about the status of Bakhmut suggested that he believed the city had fallen to Russian forces, and he offered solemn words about its fate.

When asked if the city was in Ukraine’s hands, Zelenskyy said: “I think no, but you have to — to understand that there is nothing, They’ve destroyed everything. There are no buildings. It’s a pity. It’s tragedy.”

“But, for today, Bakhmut is only in our hearts. There is nothing on this place, so — just ground and — and a lot of dead Russians,” he said.

Zelenskyy’s press secretary later walked back those previous comments.

Ukrainian defense and military officials said that fierce fighting was ongoing. Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Malyar even went so far as to say that Ukrainian troops “took the city in a semi-encirclement.”

“The enemy failed to surround Bakhmut, and they lost part of the dominant heights around the city,” Malyar said. “That is, the advance of our troops in the suburbs along the flanks, which is still ongoing, greatly complicates the enemy’s presence in Bakhmut.”

And the spokesman for Ukraine’s Eastern Group of Forces, Serhii Cherevaty, said that the Ukrainian military is managing to hold positions in the vicinity of Bakhmut.

“The president correctly said that the city has, in fact, been razed to the ground. The enemy is being destroyed every day by massive artillery and aviation strikes, and our units report that the situation is extremely difficult.

“Our military keep fortifications and several premises in the southwestern part of the city. Heavy fighting is underway,” he said.

It was only the latest flip-flopping of the situation in Bakhmut after eight months of intense fighting.

Only hours earlier, Russian state new agencies reported that President Vladimir Putin congratulated “Wagner assault detachments, as well as all servicemen of the Russian Armed Forces units, who provided them with the necessary support and flank protection, on the completion of the operation to liberate Artyomovsk,” which is Bakhmut’s Soviet-era name.

Russia’s Defense Ministry also said that Wagner and military units “completed the liberation” of Bakhmut.

At the G-7 in Japan, Zelenskyy stood side by side with U.S. President Joe Biden during a news conference. Biden announced $375 million more in aid for Ukraine, which included more ammunition, artillery and vehicles.

“I thanked him for the significant financial assistance to (Ukraine) from (the U.S.),” Zelenskyy tweeted later.

The new pledge came after the U.S. agreed to allow training on American-made F-16 fighter jets, laying the groundwork for their eventual transfer to Ukraine. Biden said Sunday that Zelenskyy had given the U.S. a “flat assurance” that Ukraine wouldn’t use the F-16s jets to attack Russian territory.

How US support for pilot training could pave path to F-16s for Ukraine

Many analysts say that even if Russia was victorious in Bakhmut, it was unlikely to turn the tide in the war.

The Russian capture of the last remaining ground in Bakhmut is “not tactically or operationally significant,” a Washington-based think tank said late Saturday. The Institute for the Study of War said that taking control of these areas “does not grant Russian forces operationally significant terrain to continue conducting offensive operations,” nor to “to defend against possible Ukrainian counterattacks.”

In a video posted on Telegram, Wagner head Yevgeny Prigozhin said the city came under complete Russian control at about midday Saturday. He spoke surrounded by about a half-dozen fighters, with ruined buildings in the background and explosions heard in the distance.

Russian forces still seek to seize the remaining part of the Donetsk region still under Ukrainian control, including several heavily fortified areas.

It isn’t clear which side has paid a higher price in the battle for Bakhmut. Both Russia and Ukraine have endured losses believed to be in the thousands, though neither has disclosed casualty numbers.

Zelenskyy underlined the importance of defending Bakhmut in an interview with The Associated Press in March, saying its fall could allow Russia to rally international support for a deal that might require Kyiv to make unacceptable compromises.

Analysts have said Bakhmut’s fall would be a blow to Ukraine and give some tactical advantages to Russia but wouldn’t prove decisive to the outcome of the war.

Bakhmut, located about 55 kilometers (34 miles) north of the Russian-held regional capital of Donetsk, had a prewar population of 80,000 and was an important industrial center, surrounded by salt and gypsum mines.

The city, which was named Artyomovsk after a Bolshevik revolutionary when Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union, also was known for its sparkling wine production in underground caves. Its broad tree-lined avenues, lush parks and stately downtown with imposing late 19th-century mansions — all now reduced to a smoldering wasteland — made it a popular tourist destination.

When a separatist rebellion engulfed eastern Ukraine in 2014 weeks after Moscow’s illegal annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula, the rebels quickly won control of the city, only to lose it a few months later.

After Russia switched its focus to the Donbas following a botched attempt to seize Kyiv early in the February 2022 invasion, Moscow’s troops tried to take Bakhmut in August but were pushed back.

The fighting there abated in autumn as Russia was confronted with Ukrainian counteroffensives in the east and the south, but it resumed at full pace late last year. In January, Russia captured the salt-mining town of Soledar, just north of Bakhmut, and closed in on the city’s suburbs.

Intense Russian shelling targeted the city and nearby villages as Moscow waged a three-sided assault to try to finish off the resistance in what Ukrainians called “fortress Bakhmut.”

Mercenaries from Wagner spearheaded the Russian offensive. Prigozhin tried to use the battle for the city to expand his clout amid the tensions with the top Russian military leaders whom he harshly criticized.

“We fought not only with the Ukrainian armed forces in Bakhmut. We fought the Russian bureaucracy, which threw sand in the wheels,” Prigozhin said in the video on Saturday.

The relentless Russian artillery bombardment left few buildings intact amid ferocious house-to-house battles. Wagner fighters “marched on the bodies of their own soldiers” according to Ukrainian officials. Both sides have spent ammunition at a rate unseen in any armed conflict for decades, firing thousands of rounds a day.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu has said that seizing the city would allow Russia to press its offensive farther into the Donetsk region, one of the four Ukrainian provinces that Moscow illegally annexed in September.

Elise Morton reported from London, and Susie Blann from Kyiv, Ukraine. Elaine Kurtenbach and Adam Schreck contributed to this report from Hiroshima.

Ukraine has long begged for the sophisticated fighter to give it a combat edge as it battles Russia’s invasion, now in its second year. And this new plan opens the door for several nations to supply the fourth-generation aircraft and for the U.S. to help train the pilots. President Joe Biden laid out the agreement to world leaders meeting in Hiroshima, Japan, on Friday, according to U.S. officials.

So far, however, the U.S. has provided no details and said decisions on when, how many, and who will supply the F-16s will be made in the months ahead while the training is underway. Details on the training are equally elusive. U.S. officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss decisions not yet made public.

Still, with this decision, the Biden administration has made a sharp reversal, after refusing to approve any transfer of the aircraft or conduct training for more than a year due to worries that it could escalate tensions with Russia. U.S. officials also have argued against the F-16 by saying that learning to fly and logistically support such an advanced aircraft would be difficult and take months.

Here is a look at the fighters, why the U.S. has been reluctant to provide them to Ukraine and what is known and not known yet about the decision.

Why does Ukraine want F-16 fighter jets?

Ukraine has pressed for Western jets since the very earliest stages of the war, insisting that the sophisticated aircraft would give them a leg up in the war and allow them to strike Russian forces.

Nearly a year ago, two Ukrainian fighter pilots who asked to be identified by their callsigns “Moonfish” and “Juice” met with reporters in Washington to argue for getting the F-16 Fighting Falcons, which have more advanced radars, sensors and missile capabilities.

In February, Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov held up a picture of a warplane when he was asked in Brussels what military aid his country needed. And earlier this month Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said during a visit to Germany that he was pushing for allies to forge a “fighter jet coalition” that would provide Ukraine with the combat planes it needs to counter Russia’s air dominance.

Ukraine’s leaders have argued that the F-16 is far superior to their existing fleet of Soviet-era warplanes. In response to those pleas, the U.S. has found ways to deliver some of the advanced capabilities without providing the actual jets.

For example, Air Force engineers found ways to modify the HARM air-to-surface anti-radiation missile so that it could be carried and fired by Ukrainian-flown MiGs. The missile and its targeting system enable the jet to identify enemy ground radars and destroy them.

Why has the US balked?

Repeatedly for months senior U.S. officials — from Biden on down — had flatly rejected sending F-16s to Ukraine, when asked publicly. And the U.S. had so far declined to allow other countries to export their U.S.-made Falcons to Ukraine.

As recently as Monday, after Zelenskyy reiterated his desire for F-16s and other jets, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby was asked if the U.S. had in any way changed its position on F-16s not being the right focus for military aid. Kirby said, “No.”

Asked similar questions in recent months, Biden also declined to approve the F-16s. In one instance earlier this year he was asked why he opposed sending them, and he responded, “Because we should keep them here.”

U.S. officials at the Pentagon have insisted that the military aid the U.S. was providing to Ukraine was based on what the country needed most to fight the war. So the emphasis has been on sending air defense systems and millions of rounds of rockets, missiles and other ammunition — as Ukraine prepares for a much expected spring offensive.

The other key reason, however, is the ongoing concern that sending fighter jets to Ukraine would enrage the Russians, provoke President Vladimir Putin and possibly escalate or broaden the war.

Well, on second thought ...

Despite all the concerns, the U.S. has proven again and again during the war that it can change its mind.

Early on the U.S. balked at sending Patriot missile batteries, longer-range missiles or tanks. And in each case, it eventually succumbed to pressure from allies and agreed to send the increasingly advanced weapons.

Of note was the recent turnabout on M1A1 Abrams tanks. For months the U.S. had said the Abrams was too complicated and required too much logistical support for Ukrainian troops. Under escalating pressure from European nations that wanted to send Ukraine their own tanks, the U.S. finally agreed to send 31 Abrams to Ukraine. Training is expected to begin soon.

The F-16 approval has been a long, slow slog. Despite public insistence — for months — that there was no movement on the F-16s, the Pentagon in March brought two Ukrainian Air Force pilots to the Morris Air National Guard Base in Tucson, Arizona, to familiarize them with the F-16 and learn how pilots are trained.

U.S. officials refused to discuss the event publicly, but privately they said the two pilots flew F-16 simulators and got a feel for the training. The U.S. Air Force, meanwhile, got insight into how long it would take for an experienced Ukrainian fighter pilot to learn the F-16′s more advanced systems. Officials determined that realistically it could be done in about four months, if the pilots were already trained to fly their own Soviet-era fighters.

What we still don’t know

According to U.S. officials, Biden told leaders in Japan that the U.S. will participate in the F-16 training, and that decisions on providing the jets will come later.

Officials said it’s still not clear if the U.S. will simply allow other nations to send F-16s to Ukraine, or if the U.S. will also send some. And there are no estimates on how many of the jets will be provided or when. Officials acknowledge that it will not be in time for the anticipated spring offensive.

And while officials said the training will begin soon, it isn’t yet clear where it will be, how many pilots will be trained and how long it will take.

The U.S. Air Force has two F-16 air wings in Europe: the 31st Fighter Wing at the Aviano Air Base in Italy and the 52nd Fighter Wing at Spangdahlem Air Base in Germany. The U.S. also routinely sends F-16 fighters in and out of Europe on a rotational basis in smaller groups.

Bolstering international support is a key priority as Ukraine prepares for what’s seen as a major push to take back territory seized by Russia in the war that began in February last year. Zelenskyy’s in-person visit to the G7 summit comes just hours after the United States agreed to allow training on potent American-made fighter jets, laying the groundwork for their eventual transfer to Ukraine.

Host nation Japan said Zelenskyy’s inclusion stems from his “strong wish” to participate in talks with the bloc and other countries that will influence his nation’s defense against Russia.

“Japan. G7. Important meetings with partners and friends of Ukraine. Security and enhanced cooperation for our victory. Peace will become closer today,” Zelenskyy tweeted upon his arrival on a plane provided by France.

A European Union official, speaking on condition of anonymity to brief reporters on the deliberations, said Zelenskyy will take part in two separate sessions Sunday. One session will be with G7 members only and will focus on the war in Ukraine. Another will include the G7 as well as the other nations invited to take part in the summit, and will focus on “peace and stability.”

U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan said that President Joe Biden and Zelenskyy would have direct engagement at the summit. On Friday, Biden announced his support for training Ukrainian pilots on U.S.-made F-16 fighter jets, a precursor to eventually providing those aircraft to Ukraine.

“It is necessary to improve (Ukraine’s) air defense capabilities, including the training of our pilots,” Zelenskyy wrote on his official Telegram channel after meeting Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni, one of a number of leaders he talked to.

Zelenskyy also met with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, their first face-to-face talks since the war, and briefed him on Ukraine’s peace plan, which calls for the withdrawal of Russian troops from the country before any negotiations.

Russia’s deputy defense minister, Alexander Grushko, accused Western countries of “continuing along the path of escalation,” following the announcements that raised the possibility of sending F-16s to Kyiv.

The G7 vowed to intensify the pressure in its joint statement Saturday.

“Russia’s brutal war of aggression represents a threat to the whole world in breach of fundamental norms, rules and principles of the international community. We reaffirm our unwavering support for Ukraine for as long as it takes to bring a comprehensive, just and lasting peace,” the group said.

G7 leaders have faced a balancing act as they look to address a raft of global worries demanding urgent attention, including climate change, AI, poverty and economic instability, nuclear proliferation and, above all, the war in Ukraine.

China, the world’s No. 2 economy, sits at the nexus of many of those concerns.

There is increasing anxiety that Beijing, which has been steadily building up its nuclear weapons program, could try to seize Taiwan by force, sparking a wider conflict. China claims the self-governing island as its own and regularly sends ships and warplanes near it.

The G7 on Saturday said they did not want to harm China and were seeking “constructive and stable relations” with Beijing, “recognizing the importance of engaging candidly with and expressing our concerns directly to China.”

They also urged China to pressure Russia to end the war in Ukraine and “support a comprehensive, just and lasting peace.”

North Korea, which has been testing missiles at a torrid pace, must completely abandon its nuclear bomb ambitions, “including any further nuclear tests or launches that use ballistic missile technology,” the leaders’ statement said.

The green light on F-16 training is the latest shift by the Biden administration as it moves to arm Ukraine with more advanced and lethal weaponry, following earlier decisions to send rocket launcher systems and Abrams tanks. The United States has insisted that it is sending weapons to Ukraine to defend itself and has discouraged attacks by Ukraine into Russian territory.

“We’ve reached a moment where it is time to look down the road again to say what is Ukraine going to need as part of a future force, to be able to deter and defend against Russian aggression as we go forward,” Sullivan said.

Biden’s decisions on when, how many, and who will provide the fourth-generation F-16 fighter jets will be made in the months ahead while the training is underway, Biden told leaders.

The G7 leaders have rolled out a new wave of global sanctions on Moscow as well as plans to enhance the effectiveness of existing financial penalties meant to constrain President Vladimir Putin’s war effort. Russia is now the most-sanctioned country in the world, but there are questions about the effectiveness.

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida separately held one-on-one talks with leaders, including Modi, who is hosting the gathering of G20 world leaders later this year.

India, the world’s largest democracy, has been measured in its comments on the war in Ukraine, and has avoided outright condemnation of Russia’s invasion. While India maintains close ties with the U.S. and its Western allies, it is also a major buyer of Russian arms and oil.

The latest sanctions aimed at Russia include tighter restrictions on already-sanctioned people and firms involved in the war effort. More than 125 individuals and organizations across 20 countries have been hit with U.S. sanctions.

The leaders began the summit with a visit to a peace park dedicated to the tens of thousands who died in the world’s first wartime atomic bomb detonation. Kishida, who represents Hiroshima in parliament, wants nuclear disarmament to be a major focus of discussions.

The G7 leaders also discussed efforts to strengthen the global economy and address rising prices that are squeezing families and government budgets around the world, particularly in developing countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

The group reiterated its aim to pull together up to $600 billion in financing for the G7′s global infrastructure development initiative, which is meant to offer countries an alternative to China’s investment dollars.

Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni will skip the last day of the G7 because of floods earlier this week in northern Italy, which claimed at least 14 lives and devastated dozens of hamlets and towns.

“Biden, who scrapped plans to travel on to Papua New Guinea and Australia after his stay in Japan so that he can get back to debt limit talks in Washington, is also meeting with leaders of the so-called Quad partnership, made up of Japan, Australia, India and the United States.

The G7 includes Japan, the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Canada and Italy, as well as the European Union.

__

Associated Press writers Zeke Miller, Elaine Kurtenbach and Mari Yamaguchi in Hiroshima, Japan, and Joanna Kozlowska in London contributed to this report.

In a video posted on Telegram, Wagner head Yevgeny Prigozhin said the city came under complete Russian control at about midday Saturday. He spoke flanked by about half a dozen fighters, with ruined buildings in the background and explosions heard in the distance.

However, after the video appeared, Ukrainian deputy defense minister Hanna Maliar said heavy fighting was continuing.

“The situation is critical,” she said. “As of now, our defenders, control certain industrial and infrastructure facilities in this area.”

Serhiy Cherevatyi, spokesman for Ukraine’s eastern command, told The Associated Press that Prigozhin’s claim “is not true. Our units are fighting in Bakhmut.” In a statement on Facebook, the Ukrainian General Staff said “heavy battles for the city of Bakhmut do not stop.”

Mykhailo Podolyak, chief of staff for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said “this is not the first time Prigozhin has said ‘we seized everything and are dominating’.” He also suggested that the Wagner chief’s statement was aimed at drawing attention away from Zelenskyy’s recent highly visible trips overseas, including to the Group of Seven summit in Japan on Saturday.

Fighting has raged in and around Bakhmut for more than eight months.

If Russian forces have taken control of Bakhmut, they will still face the massive task of seizing the remaining part of the Donetsk region still under Ukrainian control, including several heavily fortified areas.

It is not clear which side has paid a higher price in the battle for Bakhmut. Both Russia and Ukraine have endured losses believed to be in the thousands, though neither has disclosed casualty numbers.

Zelenskyy underlined the importance of defending Bakhmut in an interview with The Associated Press in March, saying its fall could allow Russia to rally international support for a deal that might require Kyiv to make unacceptable compromises.

Analysts have said Bakhmut’s fall would be a blow to Ukraine and give some tactical advantages to Russia but wouldn’t prove decisive to the outcome of the war.

Russian forces still face the enormous task of seizing the rest of the Donetsk region under Ukrainian control, including several heavily fortified areas. The provinces of Donetsk and neighboring Luhansk make up the Donbas, Ukraine’s industrial heartland where a separatist uprising began in 2014 and which Moscow illegally annexed in September.

Bakhmut, located about 55 kilometers (34 miles) north of the Russian-held regional capital of Donetsk, had a prewar population of 80,000 and was an important industrial center, surrounded by salt and gypsum mines.

The city, which was named Artyomovsk after a Bolshevik revolutionary when Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union, also was known for its sparkling wine production in underground caves. Its broad tree-lined avenues, lush parks and stately downtown with imposing late 19th century mansions — all now reduced to a smoldering wasteland — made it a popular tourist destination.

When a separatist rebellion engulfed eastern Ukraine in 2014 weeks after Moscow’s illegal annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula, the rebels quickly won control of the city, only to lose it a few months later.

After Russia switched its focus to the Donbas following a botched attempt to seize Kyiv early in the February 2022 invasion, Moscow’s troops tried to take Bakhmut in August but were pushed back.

The fighting there abated in autumn as Russia was confronted with Ukrainian counteroffensives in the east and the south, but it resumed at full pace late last year. In January, Russia captured the salt-mining town of Soledar, just north of Bakhmut, and closed in on the city’s suburbs.

Intense Russian shelling targeted the city and nearby villages as Moscow waged a three-sided assault to try to finish off the resistance in what Ukrainians called “fortress Bakhmut.”

Mercenaries from Wagner spearheaded the Russian offensive. Prigozhin tried to use the battle for the city to expand his clout amid the tensions with the top Russian military leaders whom he harshly criticized.

“We fought not only with the Ukrainian armed forces in Bakhmut. We fought the Russian bureaucracy, which threw sand in the wheels,” Prigozhin said in the video on Saturday.

The relentless Russian artillery bombardment left few buildings intact amid ferocious house-to-house battles. Wagner fighters “marched on the bodies of their own soldiers” according to Ukrainian officials. Both sides have spent ammunition at a rate unseen in any armed conflict for decades, firing thousands of rounds a day.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu has said that seizing the city would allow Russia to press its offensive farther into the Donetsk region, one of the four Ukrainian provinces that Moscow illegally annexed in September.

Teixeira, 21, is charged with violating the Espionage Act for allegedly leaking information he accessed with a top-secret security clearance and posting them to a Discord server, a social media platform popular in the gaming community.

The decision came after federal prosecutors argued in a court document that Teixeira hid “unsavory aspects of his character” from public view, citing violent and racist views from Teixeira’s online social media accounts.

Prosecutors said Teixeira revealed that he had hidden his extremist views from security clearance inspectors by scouring his online presence and downplaying a racist incident, which led to school detention as a “misunderstanding.” Prosecutors said Teixeira “certainly did not reveal—and potentially took action to actively conceal—the significant volume of racist, antisemitic, and violent rhetoric he posted online lest his true nature and character prevent him from achieving his objective.”

Teixeira’s defense attorneys had argued that others accused of violating the Espionage Act had been allowed to stay out of jail ahead of their trial, and listed multiple examples, like former Department of Defense analyst Lawrence Franklin. The FBI charged Franklin in 2005 with three counts of espionage-related crimes. Franklin did not need to serve pre-trial confinement but did receive a 12-year sentence, such was the severity of his crimes.

The prosecuting team presented comments from Teixeira’s social media accounts, obtained by the FBI, that showed Teixeira harbored extremist views. In one video described in the court document, Teixeira uses ethnic and racial slurs while holding a rifle at a weapons range.

One Discord user suggested Teixeira create a blog account to share top secret documents Teixeira allegedly bragged he had access to. He replied: “shooting myself in the back of the head twice isnt something im fond of .... none of this is public information ... and making a blog would be the equivalent of what chelsea manning did.”

Army Pvt. Chelsea Manning, formerly known as Bradley, was convicted of espionage offenses in 2013 for leaking classified information to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

At least two National Guard commanders have been suspended from their duties after findings that Teixeira had been warned on at least two occasions that he was handling sensitive information incorrectly, and the National Guard unit has been stripped of its intelligence mission while an internal investigation is ongoing.

Federal agents arrested Teixeira on April 13, 2023 after he allegedly posted dozens of highly classified U.S. military documents that included assessments of real-time events in Ukraine, and evidence of spying on U.S. allies.

This story was produced in partnership with Military Veterans in Journalism.

Now summer is just weeks away. While Russia and Ukraine are focused on an intense battle for Bakhmut, the Ukrainian spring offensive has yet to begin.

Last week Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said it’s been delayed because his country lacks enough Western weapons to succeed without suffering too many casualties. Weather and training are playing a role too, officials and defense experts say.

Officials insist the counteroffensive is coming. Preliminary moves by Ukraine to set the conditions it wants for an attack have already begun, a U.S. official said on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.

A look at the factors delaying the counteroffensive and the preparations both sides are making in anticipation of it starting soon.

WEATHER

A big part of the delay is the weather. It’s taken longer than expected for Ukraine’s frozen ground to thaw and dry, due to an extended, wet, cold spring, which has made it difficult to transition into an offensive.

Instead, the ground has retained a deep mud that makes it more difficult for non-tracked vehicles to operate.

The mud is like a soup, the official said. “You just sort of sink in it.”

TRAINING

In the past few months, tens of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers have been trained by the U.S. and allies for the fight. But the final Ukrainian battalion the U.S. is currently training is just finishing its course now.

This final class brings the total number of Ukrainians the U.S. has trained for this fight to more than 10,700. Those forces have learned not only field and medical skills but advanced combined arms tactics with the Stryker and Bradley armored fighting vehicles and Paladin self-propelled howitzers. It also includes highly skilled forces who were trained to operate the Patriot missile defense system.

According to U.S. Army Europe-Africa, more than 41,000 additional Ukrainian troops have been trained through programs run by more than 30 partner nations.

Soon a new phase will begin: The U.S. will start training Ukrainians on Abrams tanks at the Grafenwoehr Training Area in Germany. But the Ukrainians won’t wait for the tank training to be finished before they launch their counteroffensive, Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov told reporters in late April.

WEAPONS ARRIVALS

In just the past five months alone, the U.S. has announced it would send more than $14 billion in weapons and ammunition to Kyiv, most of which is being pulled from existing stockpiles in order to get the supplies to Ukraine faster. NATO and Western allies have responded too, pledging billions in tanks, armored vehicles and air defense systems.

But a lot of that gear still hasn’t arrived, said Ben Barry, a former British intelligence official who is now the senior land warfare fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

For example, of the approximately 300 tank systems pledged — such as the Leopard 2 tanks promised by countries including Denmark, the Netherlands, Spain and Germany — only about 100 have arrived. Of the 700 or so pledged fighting vehicles, such as British Marauders and U.S. Bradley infantry fighting vehicles, only about 300 have arrived, he said.

Ukraine will also need enough ammunition on hand to sustain a higher tempo fight once the counteroffensive begins, When it comes to the ammunition needed, Ukraine’s chief military logistician will also have a strong say in when the army is ready to launch, Barry said.

In just one munition — the 155mm howitzer round — Ukraine is firing between 6,000 and 8,000 rounds per day, Ukrainian parliamentary member Oleksandra Ustinova told reporters in April.

COUNTEROFFENSIVE CLUES

Both Russia and Ukraine are taking steps in anticipation of the counteroffensive.

Russia has approximately 200,000 troops along a 1,000-kilometer (620-mile) battle line, dug in using the same type of trench warfare tactics used in World War I, a Western official said on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters.

These troops are not as highly trained as Russia’s initial invading force, which sustained heavy casualties. But they are defended by ditches, minefields and dragon’s teeth — above ground triangle-shaped concrete barriers that make it difficult for tanks to move.

Meanwhile, Ukraine has begun shaping operations, such as targeting Russia’s forward lines with long-range artillery fire. That may indicate that Ukraine is about to push forward on that location — or it could be a decoy to draw Russia’s attention from its actual planned first strike, the official said.

When Ukraine does try to punch through those lines — whether in a limited area or a complex campaign carried out in multiple locations — that will be the likely indicator the offensive has begun, both Barry and the Western official said.

Barry said when Ukrainian brigades start crossing into Russian-held territories and try to attack the first line of Russian defenses, “that’s going to be a dead giveaway I think.”

___

Associated Press reporter Jill Lawless in London contributed to this report.

The fallout of the false report spread much further than the New York suburb where it started. The case drew national attention from conservative outlets and mainstream media, and furthered political fights over whether the federal government is doing too much to help new immigrants and not enough to help struggling veterans.

The incident began on May 12, when the New York Post reported that about 20 veterans staying in a Newburgh, N.Y., hotel had been kicked out by management to make room for incoming migrants being housed through county funding. Leaders from the Yerik Israel Toney Foundation said they had to scramble to find new housing overnight to keep the veterans from ending up back on the street.

VA aims to help 38,000+ homeless veterans again this year

In response, New York State Assemblyman Brian Maher — himself a Navy veteran — introduced legislation to prohibit any such future harm to veterans. He blamed “the failure of the federal government to better manage the migrant crisis” as the reason for the veterans’ plight. In an interview with Military Times, Maher said he had worked closely with the foundation for years and spoke to several individuals who said they were displaced by the moves. He was also given bank records showing hotel payments by the non-profit on behalf of the veterans.

But as the story was picked up by national media, details began to unravel. Veterans Affairs officials said they had no record of any direct work with the New York charity, or any reports of veterans in need of help from local partners. They also said their requests to speak with the veterans were refused by foundation leaders.

Putting migrants ahead of veterans is downright shameful and completely unacceptable, and yet, not at all surprising coming from this Administration and its allies in blue states.https://t.co/yw2Yp7e3b8

— Rep. Brian Mast (@RepBrianMast) May 15, 2023

On May 17, the Mid Hudson News reported that hotel officials had no record of any payments by the Yerik Israel Toney Foundation or of homeless veterans using their location for temporary housing.

Maher said he confirmed a day later that the veterans in question never existed, and that the incident was made up in an misguided attempt by foundation officials to draw attention to veterans issues.

“My heart is broken,” he said. “This looks to have been a complete and elaborate lie. [The foundation] had a lot of people working on this, and I had trust in them. But in the end, this did not happen.”

Foundation Executive Director Sharon Finch did not respond to requests for comment. Maher said he spoke with her on Thursday and she admitted the fraud. He has called for an investigation by the New York State Attorney General into the foundation in light of the incident.

On Friday, the Mid Hudson News spoke to seven local homless veterans who said they were recruited by the foundation to lie about their experiences as part of the scheme.

Despite the lies, Maher said he is undeterred in his opposition to President Joe Biden’s immigration policies and their potential effects on states like New York. But he conceded that in this case, the concerns were unfounded.

Whether the retraction gets as much attention as the initial news reports remains to be seen.

Veterans who are experiencing or at risk of homelessness can call the National Call Center for Homeless Veterans at 877-424-3838, or visit the department’s web site for available resources.

Jack Teixeira is due back in federal court in Worcester, Massachusetts, where a magistrate judge is expected to hear arguments on prosecutors’ request to keep the 21-year-old locked up before issuing his ruling.

Teixeira, who faces charges under the Espionage Act, is accused of sharing secret military documents about Russia’s war in Ukraine and other top national security issues in a chat room on Discord, a social media platform that started as a hangout for gamers.

Prosecutors said in court papers filed this week that Teixeira was caught by superiors months before his April arrest taking notes on classified information or viewing intelligence not related to his job.

He was twice admonished by superiors in September and October, and again observed in February viewing information “that was not related to his primary duty and was related to the intelligence field,” according to internal Air National Guard memos filed in court.

The revelations have raised questions about why Teixeira continued to have access to military secrets after what prosecutors described as “concerning actions” related to his handling of classified information.

Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh was questioned Thursday about why Teixeira’s leaders did not take action after the concerns were raised. Singh referred to the Justice Department and Air Force investigations, and said those concerns and potential lack of response to them were areas the inquiries would examine.

Teixeira has been in jail since his arrest last month on charges stemming from the most consequential intelligence leak in years.

Magistrate Judge David Hennessy heard arguments on detention from lawyers late last month, but put off an immediate decision and scheduled a second hearing for Friday. The judge has said he expects to rule Friday.

The high-profile case is being prosecuted by the Massachusetts U.S. Attorney’s office, whose leader — U.S. Attorney Rachael Rollins — is expected to resign by the end of the day Friday after two federal watchdog agencies found she committed a slew of ethical and legal violations.

Teixeira has not yet entered a plea. His lawyers are urging the judge to release Teixeira to his father’s home, noting he didn’t flee when media outlets began publishing his name shortly before his April 13 arrest. His lawyer told the judge last month that Teixeira “will answer the charges” and “will be judged by his fellow citizens.”

Teixeira’s lawyers noted in court papers this week there have been many Espionage Act cases in which courts have approved release or the government did not seek to keep the person behind bars pretrial.

During last month’s hearing, prosecutors told the judge that Teixeira kept an arsenal of weapons before his arrest and had a history of violent and disturbing remarks.

Teixeira frequently had online discussions about violence, saying in one November message that he would “kill a (expletive) ton of people” if he had his way, because it would be “culling the weak minded,” according to prosecutors. Years earlier in high school, he was suspended when a classmate overheard him discussing Molotov cocktails and other weapons as well as racial threats, prosecutors said.

The Justice Department said Teixeira used his government computer in July to look up mass shootings and government standoffs, including the terms “Ruby Ridge,” “Las Vegas shooting,” “Mandalay Bay shooting,” “Uvalde” and “Buffalo tops shooting” — an apparent reference to the 2022 racist mass shooting at a Buffalo supermarket.

Investigators believe Teixeira was the leader of an online private chat group on Discord called Thug Shaker Central, which drew roughly two dozen enthusiasts who talked about their favorite types of guns and shared memes and jokes. The group also held a running discussion on wars that included talk of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The leaked documents appear to detail U.S. and NATO aid to Ukraine and U.S. intelligence assessments regarding U.S. allies that could strain ties with those nations. Some show real-time details from February and March of Ukraine’s and Russia’s battlefield positions and precise numbers of battlefield gear lost and newly flowing into Ukraine from its allies.

The acknowledgment Thursday comes at a time when Pentagon is under increased pressure by Congress to show accountability for the billions of dollars it has sent in weapons, ammunition and equipment to Ukraine and as some lawmakers question whether that level of support should continue.

It also could free up more money for critical weapons as Ukraine is on the verge of a much anticipated counteroffensive — which will require as much military aid as they can get. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has previously said the offensive was delayed because they did not yet have everything they needed.

The error was caused when officials overvalued some of the systems sent to Ukraine, using the value of money it would cost to replace an item completely rather than the current value of the weapon. In many of the military aid packages, the Pentagon has opted to draw from its stockpiles of older, existing gear because it can get those items to Ukraine faster.

“During our regular oversight process of presidential drawdown packages, the Department discovered inconsistencies in equipment valuation for Ukraine. In some cases, ‘replacement cost’ rather than ‘net book value’ was used, therefore overestimating the value of the equipment drawn down from U.S. stocks,” said Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh.

When will the war in Ukraine end? Experts offer their predictions.

She added that the mistake hasn’t constrained U.S. support to Ukraine or hampered the ability to send aid to the battlefield.

A defense official said the Pentagon is still trying to determine exactly how much the total surplus will be. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, said the comptroller has asked the military services to review all previous Ukraine aid packages using the proper cost figures. The result, said the official, will be that the department will have more available funding authority to use as the Ukraine offensive nears.

The aid surplus was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.

To date the U.S. has provided Ukraine nearly $37 billion in military aid since Russia invaded in February 2022. The bulk of that has been in weapons systems, millions of munitions and ammunition rounds, and an array of trucks, sensors, radars and other equipment pulled from Pentagon stockpiles and sent quickly to Ukraine.

Members of Congress have repeatedly pressed Defense Department leaders on how closely the U.S. is tracking its aid to Ukraine to ensure that it is not subject to fraud or ending up in the wrong hands. The Pentagon has said it has a “robust program” to track the aid as it crosses the border into Ukraine and to keep tabs on it once it is there, depending on the sensitivity of each weapons system.

There also is a small team of Americans in Ukraine working with Ukrainians to do physical inspections when possible, but also virtual inspections when needed, since those teams are not going to the front lines.

In late February, the Pentagon’s inspector general said his office has found no evidence yet that any of the billions of dollars in weapons and aid to Ukraine has been lost to corruption or diverted into the wrong hands. He cautioned that those investigations are only in their early stages.

One person was killed and two were wounded by a Russian missile that got through and struck an industrial building in the southern region of Odesa, according to Serhiy Bratchuk, a spokesperson for the region’s military administration.

Amid the recently intensified Russian air assaults, China said its special envoy met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy during talks in Kyiv earlier this week with Ukraine’s chief diplomat.

Beijing’s peace proposal has so far yielded no apparent breakthrough in the war. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said Thursday that the warring parties needed to “accumulate mutual trust” for progress to be made.

Ukrainian officials sought during the talks to recruit China’s support for Kyiv’s own peace plan, according to Ukraine’s presidential office. Zelenskyy’s proposal includes the restoration of his country’s territorial integrity, the withdrawal of Russian forces and holding Russian President Vladimir Putin legally accountable for the invasion in February 2022.

Leaders of the Group of Seven leading industrialized nations gathering in Japan on Thursday were expected to denounce Russia’s war and vow to keep helping Ukraine fight Moscow. They were to hold “discussions about the battlefield” in Ukraine, according to Jake Sullivan, the White House national security adviser.

A Western official said Russia had built “potentially formidable” defensive lines on Ukrainian territory, including extensive minefields, and had more than 200,000 troops along the 1,000-kilometer (600-mile) front line, though it is unlikely to possess credible reserves.

As Ukraine receives sophisticated weapons systems from its Western allies, the Kremlin has started losing warplanes in areas previously deemed as safe, the official said, while Kyiv has proven able to shoot down Russia’s hypersonic ballistic missiles — the most advanced weapons in Moscow’s arsenal.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss military intelligence.

Meanwhile, Kremlin-installed authorities in occupied Crimea reported the derailment of eight train cars Thursday because of an explosion, prompting renewed suspicions about possible Ukrainian saboteur activity behind Russian lines. Russian state media reported that the train was carrying grain.

The state news agency RIA Novosti, quoting a source within the emergency services, said the incident occurred not far from the city of Simferopol. The Crimean Railway company said the derailment was caused by “the interference of unauthorized persons” and that there were no casualties.

Ukraine officials refuse to comment on possible acts of sabotage. Ukraine’s military intelligence spokesperson, Andriy Yusov, noted on Ukrainian television that Russian train lines “are also used to transport weapons, ammunition, armored vehicles.”

Overnight, loud explosions were heard in Kyiv as the Kremlin’s forces targeted the capital for the ninth time this month. It was a clear escalation after weeks of lull and before a much-anticipated Ukrainian counteroffensive using newly supplied advanced Western weapons.

Debris fell on two Kyiv districts, starting a fire at a garage complex. There was no immediate word about any victims, Serhii Popko, head of the Kyiv military administration, said in a Telegram post.

Ukraine also shot down two Russian exploding drones and two reconnaissance drones, according to the authorities.

The missiles were launched from Russian sea, air and ground bases, General Valerii Zaluzhnyi, the Ukrainian commander in chief, wrote on Telegram.

Several waves of missiles were aimed at areas of Ukraine between 9 p.m. Wednesday and 5:30 a.m. Thursday, he said.

Russian forces used strategic bombers from the Caspian region and apparently fired X-101 and X-55-type missiles developed during Soviet times, Kyiv authorities said. Russia then deployed reconnaissance drones over the capital.

In the last major air attack on Kyiv, on Tuesday, Ukrainian air defenses bolstered by sophisticated Western-supplied systems shot down all the incoming missiles, officials said.

That attack used hypersonic missiles, which repeatedly have been touted by Putin as providing a key strategic advantage. The missiles, which are among the most advanced weapons in Russia’s arsenal, are difficult to detect and intercept because of their hypersonic speed and maneuverability.

But sophisticated Western air defense systems, including American-made Patriot missiles, have helped spare Kyiv from the kind of destruction witnessed along the main front line in the country’s east and south.

While the ground fighting is largely deadlocked along that front line, both sides are targeting each other’s territory with long-range weapons.

The most intense fighting has focused on the battle for the city of Bakhmut and the surrounding area, in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk province, with a Ukrainian military official claiming Thursday that the army advanced up to 1.7 kilometers (more than a mile) there over the previous day.

At the same time, Yevgeny Prigozhin, the millionaire owner of Russia’s private military contractor Wagner whose troops have spearheaded the battle, claimed that Russian army units had retreated from their positions north of the city. Prigozhin is a frequent critic of the Russian military.

At least seven Ukrainian civilians were killed, including a 5-year-old boy, and 18 people were wounded over the previous 24 hours, the presidential office said.

Also, two people were wounded in a drone attack in Russia’s southern Kursk region, which borders Ukraine, the regional governor reported Thursday.

In a Telegram post, Roman Starovoit claimed Ukrainian forces dropped an explosive device from a drone on a sports and recreation complex.

In Russia’s Belgorod region, two people were killed in Ukrainian shelling of the village of Nizhnee Berezovo, about 10 kilometers (six miles) from the border, according to Gov. Vyacheslav Gladkov.

Jill Lawless in London and Yuras Karmanau in Tallinn, Estonia contributed to this report.

Biden recalled that Kishida said during a January Washington visit that the world faced one of the “most complex” security environments in recent history.

“I couldn’t agree with you more,” Biden told the Japanese prime minister as they sat with their aides at a conference table. “When our countries stand together, we stand stronger and I believe the whole world is safer when we do.”

Kishida noted that the global tensions had brought the U.S. and Japan closer together, that “the cooperation has evolved in leaps and bounds.”

The Kishida family’s home city of Hiroshima will host the gathering of major industrialized nations known at the G-7. The setting of Hiroshima, where the U.S. dropped the first nuclear bomb in 1945 during World War II, carries newfound resonance. Members of the G-7, which also includes Canada, France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom and the European Union, are grappling with the territorial ambitions of Russia and China, two nuclear powers.

Biden is also appearing on the world stage while trying to manage a divide back in the U.S. on how to raise the government’s debt limit. He opted to cut short what was supposed to be an eight-day trip to Asia, so he can return to Washington to try to avoid a potentially catastrophic default in June that could ripple across the global economy. It’s a drama that reveals how internal U.S. politics can spill over into global forums.

While aboard Air Force One, Jake Sullivan, the White House national security adviser, told reporters that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine looms large as a G-7 topic. He added leaders would discuss the state of play on the battlefield and sealing loopholes to strengthen sanctions that have been levied against Moscow.

Last year, Biden came to Tokyo to discuss Indo-Pacific strategy and launch a new trade framework for the region, with the U.S. president and Kishida engaging in an 85-minute tea ceremony and seafood dinner. The president’s first stop in Japan on Thursday was to greet U.S. troops at Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni, before he headed to Hiroshima for talks with the Japanese prime minister.

Kishida was quick to call out the risks of Russian aggression in 2022, saying then, “Ukraine today could be East Asia tomorrow.”

China has declared a limitless friendship with Russia, increasing trade in ways that blunted the ability of financial sanctions to constrain the war. But the U.S. and its allies say China has yet to ship military equipment to Russia, a sign that the friendship might have some boundaries.

Biden and Kishida also discussed economic matters. They addressed efforts to bolster supply chains for critical minerals, new partnerships between U.S. and Japanese companies and universities and efforts to promote renewable energy, according to a White House readout of the meeting.

Kishida had planned to discuss further strengthening of deterrence and response capability with Biden in the face of China’s assertiveness in the Indo-Pacific region, as well as confirming the importance of the Taiwan Strait for global peace and stability. China has said that self-governing Taiwan should come under its rule.

The U.S. and Japanese leaders also talked about ways to reinforce their three-way partnership with South Korea, which signed an agreement in April with the U.S. to strengthen their tools for deterring a nuclear attack by North Korea.

Kishida and Biden will hold a trilateral summit with South Korea’s Yoon Suk Yeol on the sidelines of the G-7 summit. But Kishida is in a complicated position by discussing efforts to respond to nuclear threats by North Korea with Japan’s history of also calling for a world free from nuclear arms, said Kan Kimura, a Kobe University professor and an expert on South Korea.

In the wake of World War II, Japan embraced pacifism. The atomic bomb scorched Hiroshima, killing 140,000 people and destroying most of the river delta city’s buildings. But current conditions are testing Japan’s pacifism and anti-nuclear weapon tradition.

“Of course, Kishida is walking a fine line,” said Christopher Johnstone, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank. “He recognizes the need for the nuclear umbrella, Japan’s dependence on U.S. extended deterrence — that that’s more vital than ever, frankly, in the current security environment.”

There are outstanding issues between the U.S. and Japan. During his January meeting with Kishida, Biden brought up the case of Lt. Ridge Alkonis, a U.S. Navy officer deployed to Japan who last year was sentenced to three years in prison after pleading guilty to the negligent driving deaths of two Japanese citizens in May 2021, according to a senior administration official. Alkonis also agreed to pay the victims $1.65 million in restitution. His family is seeking his release, saying he was detained until he confessed.

The early return to Washington to deal with the debt limit means Biden will skip planned stops in Papua New Guinea and Australia, where he was to take part in a meeting of the so-called Quad partnership with leaders of Australia, India and Japan. The Papua New Guinea visit would have been the first to the Pacific Island country by a sitting U.S. president.

The White House said that Biden phoned the prime minister of Papua New Guinea, James Marape, while traveling on Air Force One to “personally” convey the need to return to Washington. Biden invited Marape and other Pacific leaders to Washington later this year.

The documented violations — committed by both the Taliban and militant groups such as the Islamic State group — paint a harrowing picture of present-day Afghanistan. The project by the independent, non-profit Center for Information Resilience is meant to draw wider attention to the surge in abuses against civilians, journalists, and ethnic minorities across the troubled country.

With more than 1,300 data points of incidents since Aug. 17, 2021, the map is part of the center’s Afghan Witness initiative.

“The map reveals the violence and human rights abuses occurring under Taliban rule against women, independent journalists, and minorities, sometimes in the form of ad hoc beatings in the street or staged public punishment, as well as violence used to suppress peaceful protest and armed resistance,” said Benjamin Den Braber, lead analyst at Afghan Witness.

He described the map as a “transparent record of verified human rights violations in Afghanistan.”

“What we can verify represents only the tip of the iceberg of human rights violations in Afghanistan; many abuses are hidden from view and never recorded online,” Den Braber said.

The Britain-based center has used open-source data and techniques to investigate human rights abuses, war crimes and disinformation in Afghanistan, Ukraine, and Myanmar. To develop the map, the Afghan Witness team collaborated with C4ADS, a U.S.-based group that uses data-driven analysis and technology to shine a light on conflicts, instability, environmental crimes and human rights abuses.

“Our ability to tell the stories of the Taliban’s human rights abuses through visualization is a powerful tool,” said Lawrence Henderson, a program director at C4ADS.

Earlier this month, a report released by the United Nations strongly criticized the Taliban for carrying out public executions, lashings and stoning, and urged them to halt such practices. In the past six months alone, 274 men, 58 women and two boys were publicly flogged in Afghanistan, according to the report by the U.N. mission in Afghanistan.

The Taliban seized Afghanistan in mid-April 2021, during the last weeks of the U.S. and NATO troops drawdown from the country. Despite initial promises of a more moderate rule than during their previous stint in power in the 1990s, they swiftly moved to impose harsh measures in line with their strict interpretation of Islamic law, or Sharia.

In the months following their takeover, the Taliban gradually tightened restrictions on women, barring them from public spaces, such as parks and gyms, and banning education for girls beyond the sixth grade.

The restrictions have triggered an international uproar, increasing the country’s isolation at a time when its economy has collapsed — and worsening a humanitarian crisis.

The Afghan Witness map contains more than 450 pieces of footage showing attacks on civilians, more than 100 clips of attacks in the minority Shiite and Hazara communities, and more than 350 videos of protests. A viewer can search for a particular incident using keywords, access footage, original tweets or a report about it.

“Afghan Witness investigates, verifies where possible and archives data in the hope that one day accountability mechanisms will bring the perpetrators to justice,” said David Osborn, a team leader at Afghan Witness.

A statement released Thursday alongside the map, which can be accessed through the website of the Center for Information Resilience, said that the project “will continue to work with journalists around the world and civil society in Afghanistan to increase access to accurate, reliable sources of information.”

Wong, who held talks in Manila with her counterpart, Enrique Manalo, also thanked the Philippine government for its help in the discovery of a ship that sank during World War II in the northern Philippines, killing nearly a thousand Australians “in a very sad chapter in our history.”

The United States and the Philippines, which are longtime treaty allies, have been holding talks on proposed joint naval patrols in the South China Sea, where China has fortified its vast territorial claims by transforming disputed reefs into missile-protected island bases and deploying Chinese coast guard and militia ships on constant patrols.

Aside from China and the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan and Brunei are also embroiled in the territorial disputes.

Washington lays no claims to the disputed waters but has deployed warships and fighter jets on patrols which it says are aimed at ensuring freedom of navigation and overflight.

In February, Australian Defense Minister Richard Marles and his Philippine counterpart said in Manila that they were looking at Australian and Philippine forces possibly carrying out joint patrols.

Responding to a question at a news conference Thursday about the prospects of Australia joining such patrols with the U.S. and the Philippines, Wong said that “we are open to cooperating with all our partners to exercise freedom of navigation and overflight.”

“Our departments are discussing the best pathway to take this forward, and we want to keep working with the Philippines on that,” Wong said, without elaborating.

She added that Australia wants “a region that is predictable” where “sovereignty is respected.”

In her talks with Philippine officials, Wong said she discussed ways to bolster security cooperation, including “Australia providing drone equipment, training and other technology to strengthen your coast guard in maritime domain awareness and protection capabilities.”

The two countries are also discussing plans for more joint military training and exercises, Wong said.

The United States and Australia have both struck agreements with the Philippines for temporary visits by troops for joint combat exercises in the country. The Philippine Constitution prohibits the permanent basing of foreign troops and their involvement in local combat.

Wong thanked the Philippines for its help in the recent discovery of a sunken Japanese ship, the Montevideo Maru, off the northern Philippine province of Ilocos Norte.

A team of explorers announced in Australia last month that it had found the ship, which was transporting Allied prisoners of war when it was torpedoed off the Philippine coast in 1942, resulting in Australia’s largest maritime wartime loss.

The Montevideo Maru was transporting prisoners and civilians who were captured after the fall of Rabaul in Papua New Guinea. The ship was not marked as carrying POWs, and on July 1, 1942, the American submarine Sturgeon, after stalking the ship through the night, fired four torpedoes which sank the vessel in less than 10 minutes. More than 1,000 prisoners from 14 nations were killed, including 979 Australians.

“This has been a very sad chapter in our history, and we are glad for your assistance in that work,” Wong said.

A Marion County jury convicted Dustin E. Passarelli, 37, of murder on Wednesday after a three-day trial over the February 2019 killing of 32-year-old Mustafa Ayoubi. Passarelli, of Plainfield, could get up to 65 years in prison when he’s sentenced June 21 on the murder charge.

He was also convicted of a firearm enhancement charge that could boost his sentence by up to 20 years, the county prosecutor’s office said.

Defense attorney, Chris Eskew, told The Indianapolis Star that he and Passarelli were disappointed by the verdict, but he declined to comment further about the case until after the sentencing.

Passarelli shot and killed Ayoubi following a road rage incident on Interstate 465 that led to Passarelli following Ayoubi to an apartment complex on the city’s northwest side, according to court documents.

Passarelli told police that Ayoubi either threw something at his car or collided with it on the highway and that after he followed Ayoubi to the apartment complex, Ayoubi broke one of Passarelli’s car windows with a punch.

The defense argued that Passarelli was within his rights to fire at Ayoubi because it was self-defense.

Multiple witnesses said Passarelli and Ayoubi shouted inflammatory remarks at each other in front of a townhome. They said Passarelli yelled religious and ethnic insults at the unarmed Ayoubi, including, “Go back to your country,” shortly before he shot him.

Passarelli claimed that post-traumatic stress disorder he developed during his time in the Army contributed to his behavior on the highway and was partially to blame for the shooting. But Passarelli’s mental evaluation and PTSD claims were ruled inadmissible in court.

Passarelli was not charged with a hate crime. The FBI had said it was looking into whether Ayoubi’s killing involved a federal civil rights violation, but no federal charges were ever filed.

Six weeks after Ayoubi’s killing, Indiana lawmakers passed a hate crimes bill that included a provision allowing judges to impose longer sentences for crimes motivated by bias.

Before the bill became law, Indiana was one of five states without a hate crime law.

Ayoubi’s sister, who had urged lawmakers to pass a hate crime law, told The Indianapolis Star that her family was originally from Afghanistan and arrived in the United States in 2001 as refugees. They later became U.S. citizens.

Zahra Ayoubi said Wednesday that the verdict can allow her family to finally begin to celebrate her younger brother’s life four years after his killing.

“I wish this never happened,” she said. “The true justice would be if we were all still together right now. However, he died. And he left a legacy.”

Cmdr. Peter C. Flynn said that Russian warplanes and naval vessels have been conducting themselves professionally, like other military forces in the region, and there’s been no indication of any heightened aggression or hostility.

“We obviously study what is going on in theater and you know that certainly plays a role in what we do and what we prepare for, but not a significant change” in the attitude of Russian forces, Flynn told The Associated Press aboard the USS Arleigh Burke.

The destroyer, one of the United States’ most capable warships, is docked at Cyprus’ main Limassol port.

Russia has a naval base in Tartus, Syria, the only such facility that Moscow has outside the former Soviet Union. In 2017, Moscow struck a deal with Syrian President Bashar Assad to extend its lease on Tartus for 49 years and keep up to 11 warships there, including nuclear-powered ones.

Tartus is 180 kilometers (112 miles) from Cyprus’ eastern coastline.

F-35 jets from the U.K.’s newest aircraft carrier, HMS Queen Elizabeth, operating off Cyprus in June 2021 had stirred the interest of Russian warplanes, which tried to keep tabs on the cutting-edge warplanes.

The Arleigh Burke is three months into a 4½-month patrol mission in the region. It docked in Cyprus after operating in the Red Sea and passing through the Suez Canal. Since February, the destroyer has also operated above the Arctic Circle, the Baltic and North Seas and the eastern Atlantic.

“The Eastern Mediterranean is so important for maritime security and the history here is just so much,” Flynn said.

The Arleigh Burke was the last U.S. Navy ship to sail in the Black Sea prior to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

“The Arleigh Burke has the most capable, offensive and defensive systems of any other U.S. ship,” Flynn said. “So if we can’t do it, nobody else can.”

The ship is equipped with an array of missiles that can engage aircraft, submarines, other surface ships and even ballistic missiles in outer space.

Flynn said the destroyer has recently conducted joint maneuvers with Saudi and Egyptian naval vessels. Apart from projecting U.S. power, the ship aims to buttress ties with friendly nations, he said.

A recent increase in exchanges between the U.S. and Taiwanese militaries is an “extremely wrong and dangerous move,” Defense Ministry spokesperson Col. Tan Kefei said in a statement and video posted online.

China’s People’s Liberation Army “continues to strengthen military training and preparations and will resolutely smash any form of Taiwanese independence secession along with attempts at outside interference, and will resolutely defend national sovereignty and territorial integrity,” Tan said, in a reference to Taiwan’s closest ally, the United States.

China claims the island of 23 million people as its own territory, to be brought under its control by force if necessary.

With the world’s largest navy, latest-generation fighter jets and a huge arsenal of ballistic missiles, China has been upping its threats by sending planes and warships into waters and airspace around Taiwan. With more than 2 million members, the PLA also ranks as the world’s largest standing military, although transporting even a portion of the force in the event of an invasion is considered a huge logistical challenge.

US defense contractors want deeper cooperation with Taiwan

Along with daily air and sea incursions around Taiwan, Beijing has held military exercises in and around the Taiwan Strait dividing the sides, seen in part as a rehearsal for a blockade or invasion that would have massive consequences for security and economies worldwide.

Such actions seek to harass Taiwan’s military and intimidate politicians and voters who will choose a new president and legislature next year.

The moves appear to have had limited effect, with most Taiwanese firmly in favor of maintaining their de facto independent status. Politicians and other public figures from Europe and the U.S. have also been making frequent trips to Taipei to show their support, despite their countries’ lack of formal diplomatic ties in deference to Beijing.

Tan’s comments were prompted by a question from an unidentified reporter about reports that U.S. President Joe Biden is preparing to approve the sale of $500 million in arms to Taiwan, as well as sending more than 100 military personnel to evaluate training methods and offer suggestions for improving the island’s defenses.

Taiwan enjoys strong support from both the U.S. Democratic and Republican parties, which have called on the Biden administration to follow through on nearly $19 billion in military items approved for sale but not yet delivered to Taiwan.

Administration officials have blamed the delayed deliveries on bottlenecks in production related to issues from the COVID-19 pandemic to limited capacity and increased demand for arms to assist Ukraine. Biden’s move would allow the export of items from existing U.S. military stockpiles, speeding up the delivery of at least some of the hardware Taiwan needs to deter or repel any Chinese attack.

Among the items on backorder are Harpoon anti-ship missiles, F-16 fighter jets, shoulder-fired Javelin and Stinger missiles and the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, or HIMARS, a multiple rocket and missile launcher mounted on a truck that has become a crucial weapon for Ukrainian troops battling Russian invasion forces.

Tan’s comments were in line with Beijing’s standard tone on what it calls the “core of China’s core interests.” The two sides split at the end of a civil war in 1949 and Beijing considers bringing Taiwan under its control as key to asserting its sovereignty and territorial integrity.

Attempts to “seek independence by relying on the United States” and “seek independence by military might” are a “dead end,” Tan said.

With China-U.S. relations at a historic low and Taiwanese unreceptive to Beijing’s demands for political concessions on unification, concerns are rising about the likelihood of an open conflict involving all three sides and possibly U.S. treaty allies such as Japan.

China’s diplomatic and economic support for Russia following its invasion of Ukraine has also increased tensions with Washington. Beijing is believed to be closely studying Moscow’s military failures in the conflict, while the Western will to back Kyiv is seen by some as a test of its determination to side with Taiwan in the event of a conflict with China.

Olena Zelenska visited South Korea as a special envoy of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. During her meeting with Yoon, Zelenska requested South Korea expand its support of nonlethal military supplies, including equipment for detecting and removing mines and ambulance vehicles, according to Yoon’s office.

Yoon replied that his government would closely coordinate with NATO and other international partners to “actively support the Ukrainian people,” his spokesperson Lee Do Woon said during a briefing.

Yoon also condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, saying the “horrific losses of innocent lives, especially women and children, are unacceptable under any circumstances,” according to remarks shared by his office.

Lee said Zelenska made no request for South Korean weapons supplies during her conversation with Yoon.

South Korea, a growing arms exporter with a well-equipped military backed by the United States, has provided humanitarian aid and other support to Ukraine while joining U.S.-led economic sanctions against Moscow. But it has not directly provided arms to Ukraine, citing a long-standing policy of not supplying weapons to countries actively engaged in conflict.

During a visit to South Korea in January, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg called for South Korea to provide direct military support to Ukraine, saying Kyiv is in urgent need of weapons to fight off the prolonged Russian invasion.

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, South Korea has reached billions of dollars worth of deals to provide tanks, howitzers, fighter jets and other weapons systems to Poland, a NATO member. An American official said in November that the United States has agreed to buy 100,000 artillery rounds from South Korean manufacturers to provide to Ukraine, although South Korean officials have maintained that the munitions were meant to refill depleted U.S. stocks.

The bombardment included six Russian “Kinzhal” aero-ballistic hypersonic missiles — the most fired in a single attack in the war so far — according to air force spokesman Yurii Ihnat.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly touted the “Kinzhals” as a key strategic competitive advantage of Russia, difficult to detect and intercept because of their hypersonic speed and other characteristics. If confirmed, Ukraine’s ability to shoot down all six fired on Tuesday appeared to mark another blow to his war efforts and shows the increasing effectiveness of Kyiv’s air defenses.

Ihnat said Russia fired the “Kinzhals” from MiG-31K warplanes, along with nine cruise missiles from ships in the Black Sea and three S-400 cruise missiles launched from the ground.

Loud explosions boomed over Kyiv in the major nighttime attack apparently aimed at overwhelming Ukraine’s air defenses. Kyiv’s mayor reported three people were wounded.

The barrage came as European leaders sought new ways to punish Russia for the war and a Chinese envoy sought traction for Beijing’s peace proposal, which so far appears to have made little impression on the warring sides. It also came as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy returned home from a whirlwind European tour to seek more military aid.

The overnight attack on Kyiv was “exceptional in its density — the maximum number of attacking missiles in the shortest period of time,” said Serhii Popko, the head of the Kyiv military administration.

Valentyna Myronets, a 64-year-old Kyiv resident, said she felt “pain, fear, nervousness, restlessness” amid the assaults. “God, we are waiting for victory and when all this is over,” she said.

U.K. Ambassador Melinda Simmons tweeted that the barrage was “pretty intense.”

“Bangs and shaking walls are not an easy night,” she wrote.

It was the eighth time this month that Russian air raids had targeted the capital, a clear escalation after weeks of lull and ahead of a much-anticipated Ukrainian counteroffensive using newly supplied advanced Western weapons.

After the first onslaught, Russia also launched Iranian-made Shahed attack drones and conducted aerial reconnaissance, Ihnat said.

Debris fell across several districts in the capital, starting fires, Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said.

Sophisticated Western air defense systems, including American-made Patriot missiles, have helped spare Kyiv from the kind of destruction witnessed along the main front line in the country’s east and south. While most of the ground fighting is stalemated along that front line, both sides are targeting other territory with long-range weapons.

Associated Press reporters saw a metal fragment that landed inside the Kyiv zoo labeled Lockheed Martin and Boeing, two of the companies involved in manufacturing the Patriot missile system.

Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said a “Kinzhal” destroyed a Patriot missile battery in Kyiv but he didn’t provide evidence, and the statement couldn’t be independently verified. Ihnat, the Ukrainian air force spokesman, refused to comment on the claim.

The bolstered air defenses have deterred Russian aircraft from going deep into Ukraine and helped shape the course of the war, military experts say.

In Iceland, European leaders are taking part in a rare summit of the 46-nation Council of Europe, the continent’s main human rights body, to discuss how to manage claims for compensation from Russia’s damage to Ukraine.

Meanwhile, a Chinese envoy is preparing to visit Ukraine and Russia as Beijing advocates a peace plan it released in February. Li Hui, a former ambassador to Moscow, also will visit Poland, France and Germany, according to the Chinese foreign ministry.

Ukraine has cautiously welcomed China’s proposal while saying it would wait to see what specific actions China takes. Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s government says it is neutral and wants to mediate in the war, but it has given Moscow political support, and a breakthrough appears unlikely more than 14 months after Russia’s full-scale invasion.

In Russian-occupied southern Ukraine, about 500 kilometers (300 miles) from Kyiv, Russian officials have begun training for a planned evacuation from the shut-down Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant of 3,100 staff and their families, a representative of Energoatom, Ukraine’s state nuclear company, said Tuesday. The plant, Europe’s largest, employed around 11,000 staff before the war, some 6,000 of whom remain at the site and in the surrounding town of Enerhodar.

More Russian military units have been arriving at the site and are mining it, the representative told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity due to security concerns. Russian troops have barred remaining workers from communicating with each other or leaving, to prevent information from leaking out on Russian positions and military equipment, Energoatom said on Telegram.

In other developments:

—Ukrainian forces have recaptured around 20 kilometers (7.7 square miles) of territory north and south of Bakhmut since last week, but Russian troops continue their grinding advance within the city, Ukraine’s deputy defense minister said Tuesday. “Heavy battles continue with differing results,” Hanna Malyar said on Telegram. The Russian-installed head of the partially occupied Donetsk region, Denis Pushilin, told Russian state TV that Russian forces near Bakhmut have reinforced their flanks in the face of Ukrainian successes.

— At least seven civilians died and 14 others were wounded in Russian shelling of Ukrainian regions from Monday through Tuesday morning, the country’s presidential office said.

— In Ukraine’s latest corruption scandal, which saw the head of the Supreme Court detained for alleged bribery on Monday, the chief of Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau, Semen Kryvonos, said Tuesday the main suspect in the case was mining magnate Kostiantyn Zhevago.

Zhevago was arrested in the French Alps in January on suspicion of embezzling tens of millions of dollars. Kyiv has requested his extradition.

— South African President Cyril Ramaphosa says his Russian and Ukrainian counterparts have agreed to separate meetings with a delegation of African heads of state to discuss a possible plan to end the war in Ukraine. A statement from Ramaphosa’s office on Tuesday said he spoke with Putin and Zelenskyy by phone over the weekend and they agreed to host “an African leaders peace mission” in Moscow and Kyiv, respectively.

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Vasilisa Stepanenko in Kyiv, and Yuras Karmanau in Tallinn, Estonia, contributed to this report.

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Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

European leaders promised Zelenskyy an arsenal of missiles, tanks and drones during a whirlwind three-day visit to Italy, the Vatican, Germany, France and the U.K. that sought to replenish Ukraine’s depleted weapons supplies ahead of a long-anticipated spring offensive aimed at turning the tide of the war.

The trip was also about shoring up European political and military support for the longer term, to ensure Ukraine can hold any ground it takes back and press for a favorable peace.

“They’ve got to show … they’re in this conflict for the long term and that they’re able to keep sustaining this effort,” said Justin Crump, a former British tank commander who heads security consultancy Sibylline. “It’s not going to be one shot and done.”

Zelenskyy’s energetic international diplomacy over 15 months of war has persuaded Ukraine’s Western allies to send ever more powerful weapons, from German Leopard tanks to U.S. Patriot missile systems and Storm Shadow cruise missiles from the U.K.

Pressing his case to European leaders in person shows Zelenskyy’s growing confidence about traveling abroad. It’s also an attempt to get his “ducks in a row” as Ukraine prepares a push to reclaim territory seized by Russia, said Patrick Bury, senior lecturer in security at the University of Bath.

Bury said that if Ukraine launches an offensive “and it doesn’t go well, there might be a drop off in support and more pressure to negotiate. I think he’s just trying to bind in for as long as he possibly can as much support as he can from the West.”

On Monday, the U.K. pledged hundreds more air defense missiles, as well as attack drones with a range of more than 200 kilometers (120 miles).

France, where Ukraine’s leader met President Emmanuel Macron on Sunday, said it would supply Ukraine with dozens of light tanks and armored vehicles, along with unspecified air defense systems.

Zelenskyy also visited Germany for talks with Chancellor Olaf Scholz, whose initial reluctance to provide Ukraine with lethal weapons was a source of frustration in Kyiv. Now, Germany has become one of the biggest arms suppliers to Ukraine, including battle tanks and the sophisticated IRIS-T SLM air-defense system.

During Zelenskyy’s visit Germany announced another 2.7 billion euros ($3 billion) worth of equipment, including tanks, anti-aircraft systems and ammunition.

But Zelensky’s aim of forming an international “fighter jet coalition” to supply Ukraine with planes has run up against NATO concern about escalating the alliance’s role in the war. Ukraine wants U.S.-made F-16s to supplement its Soviet-era jets, but Washington has resisted calls to send them.

“We want to create a jet coalition and I am very positive about it,” Zelenskyy said Monday after meeting British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. But, he added: “We have to work a little bit more on it.”

Sunak said Britain wants to help Ukraine acquire jets, but “it’s not a straightforward thing.”

The U.K. does not have any F-16s, but says it will give Ukrainian pilots basic training on Western-standard jets starting this summer.

Germany’s Scholz was evasive when asked about planes, referring instead to the anti-aircraft system it has provided to Kyiv.

“That’s what we as Germany are now concentrating on,” he said.

The flurry of announcements from Europe’s capitals is part diplomatic theater. Ukraine gets a steady flow of equipment from the West, and some of the weapons announced this week may already have been on the way. Zelenskyy’s trip was about securing supplies for the long term, as well as the imminent offensive.

“They should be able to carry out the offensive with what they already have, but that’s not enough to sustain it over the long term,” said retired French Vice Adm. Michel Olhagaray, a former head of France’s center for higher military studies. “And they’ll need the long term to make the Russians crack.”

Zelenskyy began his European tour Saturday in Rome, where he received a hearty commitment from Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni — and a more nuanced and less welcome message from Pope Francis.

Calling Zelenskyy her friend and emphasizing their personal rapport, Meloni promised to provide Ukraine with whatever it needs to win the war and said any compromise to accept an “unjust peace” was unacceptable for Ukraine and Italy, and dangerous for the rest of Europe.

“We cannot call ‘peace’ something that could resemble an invasion,” she told reporters, as Zelenskyy nodded along in agreement.

Zelenskyy also visited the Vatican to meet Pope Francis, who stressed the need for “gestures of humanity” toward the most vulnerable and innocent victims of the conflict.

While Francis has frequently prayed for the “martyred” Ukrainian people, he has also lamented the Russian mothers who have lost their sons. The equivalence, and Francis’ reluctance to outright condemn Russia, is part of the Vatican’s tradition of neutrality in conflicts.

Zelenskyy made clear he didn’t appreciate Francis’ emphasis on both Russian and Ukrainian victims of the war, tweeting: “there can be no equality between the victim and the aggressor.”

It was a reminder that Ukraine faces a political as well as a military battle. In Africa and Asia, especially, many are reluctant to take sides in what is seen as a regional European conflict.

François Heisbourg, a French analyst on defense and security questions at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said Zelenskyy’s European trip was part “weapons shopping tour, that’s clear enough, and it seems to be working very well.”

“But the other aspect, of course, is what you would call shaping the political battlefield,” he said. “The politics are no less important for Zelenskyy than the purely military stuff.”

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Associated Press writers John Leicester in Paris, Kirsten Grieshaber in Berlin, Nicole Winfield in Rome and Danica Kirka in London contributed to this report.

The vote in the State Duma came less than a week after President Vladimir Putin introduced a draft bill on May 10 “denouncing” the Treaty of Conventional Armed Forces in Europe, which aimed to prevent Cold War rivals from massing forces at or near mutual borders. The deal was signed in November 1990, but not fully ratified until two years later.

The Federation Council, Russia’s Kremlin-controlled upper chamber that generally rubber-stamps legislation that the Duma has approved, is scheduled to consider Russia’s pullout from the treaty next Wednesday.

Moscow first announced its intention to completely withdraw from the agreement in early 2015. Since last February, Moscow’s military operation in Ukraine has seen hundreds of thousands of Russian troops pour into the country, which shares a border with NATO members Poland, Slovakia, Romania and Hungary.

On Tuesday, Putin’s designated envoy told the State Duma that NATO countries had “made it impossible” for Russia to remain in the treaty by allowing for the alliance’s expansion into Central and Eastern Europe.

Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov also described the treaty as “contrary to Russia’s security interests” in an interview published Monday in Parliamentskaya Gazeta, a weekly published by the State Duma.

Ryabkov’s remarks were echoed by key deputies during the parliamentary session Tuesday. State Duma speaker Leonid Slutsky charged that the treaty had “long existed only on paper,” while Andrey Kartapolov, the chairman of Russia’s parliamentary committee, said that it had been rendered obsolete by NATO’s placing of military infrastructure in Central and Eastern European member states.

Ryabkov told lawmakers that completing the withdrawal process would take about six months.

Replying to an Associated Press query, Minister Michalis Georgallas said a first group of 24 Ukrainians was currently undergoing training in Cypriot military installations, with another group expected to arrive next month.

US Abrams tanks for training Ukrainian forces arrive in Germany early

The training was under the auspices of a European Union Military Assistance Mission (EUMAM Ukraine) that was launched last October to meet Ukraine’s calls for support, he said.

As the situation on the ground in Ukraine now stands, a 5,000-strong team of demining experts would need at least 30 years to clear all mines from unmarked minefields across the front lines, Georgallas said.

He said Cypriot officers are also taking part in training of Ukrainian personnel in Germany.

Cyprus has much experience in demining as many thousands of the deadly munitions remain. The mines are a vestige of defenses set up in the wake of the 1974 Turkish invasion triggered by a coup that aimed to unite Cyprus with Greece.

The United Nations have for years assisted in demining efforts, particularly inside a buffer zone it controls that separates a breakaway, Turkish Cypriot north and an internationally recognized, Greek Cypriot south.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Kyiv was delaying its long-awaited counteroffensive against Russia’s occupying forces because it lacked enough Western weapons to succeed without taking too many casualties.

A Ukrainian counteroffensive against Russia’s more than 14-month-old invasion has been expected since warmer weather improved battlefield conditions. But Zelenskyy told European broadcasters in an interview aired Thursday that a counteroffensive now would result in too many casualties and that would be “unacceptable.”

The Ukrainian president said more time was needed since “not everything has arrived yet” in terms of equipment.

Ukraine’s troops are receiving Western training, as well as advanced weapons, as they gear up for an assault.

Cyprus has said it won’t transfer its Soviet-era tanks, armored personnel carriers and anti-aircraft missile batteries to Ukraine because it continues to face off against 35,000 Turkish troops deployed in the north.

Today the man known as Abu Mohammed al-Golani is trying hard to distance his group, Hayat Tahrir al Sham, known as HTS, from its al-Qaida origins, spreading a message of pluralism and religious tolerance.

As part of the rebranding, he has cracked down on extremist factions and dissolved the notorious religious police. For the first time in more than a decade, a Mass was performed recently at a long-shuttered church in Idlib province.

Al-Golani told a recent gathering of religious and local officials that Islamic law should not be imposed by force. “We don’t want the society to become hypocritical so that they pray when they see us and don’t once we leave,” al-Golani said, pointing to Saudi Arabia, which has relaxed its social controls in recent years after decades of strict Islamic rule.

The pivot comes at a time when al-Golani’s group is increasingly isolated. Countries that had once backed insurgents in Syria’s uprising-turned-civil-war are restoring relations with Syrian President Bashar Assad.

A look at the US military mission in Syria and its dangers

Saudi Arabia, a one-time Assad foe, reversed course and led a push resulting in Syria’s return to the Arab League last week, after 12 years of regional isolation.

Even Turkey, the main remaining state backer of armed opposition groups in Syria, has signaled a shift. Last week, the Turkish foreign minister met with his Syrian counterpart in Moscow, the first such meeting since 2011. The foreign ministers of Russia and Iran, Assad’s main allies, also attended.

The meeting marked a significant step toward Damascus and Ankara restoring ties, even as the presence of Turkish troops in northwest Syria remains a sticking point.

At the same time, the United States considers HTS a terrorist group and has offered a $10 million reward for information on al-Golani’s whereabouts. The United Nations also designates it a terrorist organization.

Earlier this month, the U.S. and Turkey jointly slapped sanctions on two people who allegedly raised money for militant groups, including HTS.

Al-Golani rose to prominence in the early months of the Syrian uprising in 2011, when he became the leader of al-Qaida’s branch in Syria, known at the time as the Nusra Front. Militants and top officials from Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida flocked to the group’s base of operations in northern Syria, where many of them were later killed in U.S. strikes.

In July 2016, the Nusra Front changed its name to Fatah al-Sham Front and said it was cutting ties with al-Qaida, in what was seen by many as an attempt to improve its image. Fatah al-Sham later merged with several other groups and became Hayat Tahrir al Sham.

During that period, al-Golani showed his face publicly for the first time and changed his style of dress from white turbans and robes to shirts and trousers. His fighters went after Islamic State group militants who fled to Idlib after their defeat and cracked down on Horas al-Din or “Guardians of Religion,” another militant group that includes hardcore al-Qaida members who broke away from HTS.

The change in al-Golani’s public image appears not to have impressed the U.S. government.

Posts on social media accounts of the U.S. government’s Rewards for Justice show a photo of al-Golani wearing a light blue shirt and dark blue blazer with a caption in Arabic that reads: “Hello, handsome al-Golani. Nice shirt. You can change your uniform, but you will always be a terrorist. Don’t forget the $10 million reward.”

In 2017, HTS set up a so-called “salvation government” to run day-to-day affairs in the region. At first, it attempted to enforce a strict interpretation of Islamic law. Religious police were tasked with making sure that women were covered, with only their faces and hands showing. Its members would force shops to close on Fridays so that people could attend the weekly prayers. Playing music was banned, as was smoking water pipes in public.

In March 2020, Russia and Turkey, which support rival groups in the conflict, reached a truce. Since then, rebel-held northwestern Syria has witnessed relative calm, and HTS focused its efforts on cracking down on the remnants of IS and other jihadist groups. The International Crisis Group think tank, in a report earlier this year, said HTS has evolved and “distanced itself from global jihadism.”

HTS has also sometimes portrayed itself as a defender of minorities in the primarily Sunni Arab northwest.

In March, members of a Turkish-backed armed group shot dead four Kurdish men in the town of Jinderis as they lit a fire to celebrate the Kurdish new year. Al-Golani met with the victims’ families and other Kurdish residents of the area and promised revenge against the perpetrators.

In a 2021 interview with PBS, al-Golani called his group’s terrorist designation “unfair” and “political,” saying that while he had criticized Western policies in the region, “we didn’t say we want to fight (them).”

Al-Golani said his involvement with al-Qaeda has ended, and that even in the past his group was “against carrying out operations outside of Syria.”

The State Department said in a statement that al-Golani remains a designated terrorist and that it does not comment on possible deliberations about changing such designations.

Aron Lund, a fellow with the Century International research center, said he believes it’s unlikely the U.S. will remove HTS and al-Golani from its terrorism list. “As far as I can tell, the U.S. government remains genuinely concerned about the group’s links to global jihadism,” Lund said.

Waiel Olwan, a researcher at the Turkey-based think tank Jusoor for Studies, said he believes al-Golani is trying to show he is in control of Idlib and to guarantee a place for himself in Syria once the conflict ends.

Asim Zedan, an activist whose group tracks violations by HTS, said the ongoing terror designation is a blow to al-Golani’s self-image.

“After forming the salvation government and setting up ministries, al-Golani now sees himself as a head of state,” Zedan said.

Mroue reported from Beirut.

Zelenskyy is visiting allies in search of further arms deliveries to help his country fend off the Russian invasion, and funds to rebuild what’s been destroyed by more than a year of devastating conflict.

A Luftwaffe jet flew Zelenskyy to the German capital from Rome, where he had met Saturday with Pope Francis and Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni.

On the eve of his arrival — which is taking place amid tight security — the German government announced a new package of military aid for Ukraine worth more than 2.7 billion euros ($3 billion), including tanks, anti-aircraft systems and ammunition.

“Already in Berlin. Weapons. Powerful package. Air defense. Reconstruction. EU. NATO. Security,” Zelenskyy tweeted Sunday, in an apparent reference to the key priorities of his trip.

After initially hesitating to provide Ukraine with lethal weapons, Germany has become one of the biggest suppliers of arms to Ukraine, including Leopard 1 and 2 battle tanks, and the sophisticated IRIS-T SLM air-defense system. Modern Western hardware is considered crucial if Ukraine is to succeed in its planned counteroffensive against Russian troops.

Zelenskyy first met with President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Germany’s head of state, who was snubbed by Kyiv last year, apparently over his previous close ties to Russia, causing a chill in diplomatic relations between Ukraine and Germany.

Since then, both Steinmeier and Chancellor Olaf Scholz have visited Ukraine, assuring Zelenskyy of their support for his country’s fight against the Russian invasion. Announcing the new arms package, German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said Berlin would help Ukraine for “as long as it takes.”

After meeting Scholz and other senior officials at the chancellery, the two leaders are expected to fly to the western city of Aachen for Zelenskyy to receive the International Charlemagne Prize awarded to him and the people of Ukraine.

Organizers say the award recognizes that their resistance against Russia’s invasion is a defense “not just of the sovereignty of their country and the life of its citizens, but also of Europe and European values.”

While German leaders have expressed strong backing for Ukraine, German voters are divided on whether the country should provide further weapons, particularly advanced fighter jets of the kind Kyiv is asking its allies for.

——

Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine: https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

Explosions flashed in the fog hanging over the Euphrates River like a coming summer storm.

The continuous thunder of Russian guns pounded the American positions in a burned-out natural gas refinery in eastern Syria. Tracers crisscrossed the Syrian sky. The Special Forces soldiers felt the rumble of the explosions through the armored cabins of their trucks.

Overhead, America’s most lethal aircraft — F-15E strike fighters, AH-64 Apache attack helicopters, and MQ-9 Reapers—pounded the Russian guns and enemy formations below.

The Special Forces team had been in combat against ISIS fighters for months, but this was different. ISIS, for the most part, was a few mortar rounds or spray-and-pray potshots from an AK-47. This was a trained Russian force with artillery and armored vehicles.

This was a fair fight, and the U.S. troops were driving into it.

“It looked like New York City on New Year’s Eve,” Chauncey, a former Special Forces team sergeant who helped lead a quick reaction force (QRF) to the refinery, tells The War Horse. “By far, the most chaotic battle scene that I’ve ever observed, let alone be a part of.”

The soldiers’ last names have been withheld to protect their identities.

In February 2018, the American Special Forces team deployed to Syria as part of the ongoing campaign against ISIS that began in 2015. But after months of successful operations against ISIS, the team now faced a new adversary. Around 500 pro-Syrian government forces, including Russian mercenaries from the Wagner Group, launched a nearly four-hour attack on a small group of 40 American Special Operations troops and their Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) allies at a Conoco natural gas refinery in eastern Syria. Among the largest in the area, it had multiple buildings that provided good cover. It offered the Russians a foothold on the east side of the river.

The Wagner Group seized oil and gas fields in Syria to protect them for the Assad government, with mercenaries earning a share of production proceeds, according to American intelligence officials. Documents obtained by The New York Times referred to the fighters at the refinery as a “pro-regime force,” loyal to President Bashar al-Assad of Syria. While the group included some Syrian government soldiers and militias, American military and intelligence officials determined the majority were private Russian paramilitary mercenaries, likely affiliated with the Wagner Group, a company frequently used by the Kremlin to carry out objectives without appearing to be directly linked to the Russian government.

Exclusive interviews with three former Special Forces soldiers who fought in the battle reveal some of the first details about the clash from American troops on the ground. This is the first public, on-the-record account from participants of one of the deadliest battles the American military has faced in Syria since they deployed to fight ISIS in September 2014 under the Obama administration.

The possibility of Russian military forces and American troops colliding in Syria was a constant concern as the adversaries took opposing sides in Syria’s seven-year civil war. In February 2018, this battle became one of the rare occasions that American and Russian combatants exchanged fire.

During a lull in the artillery barrage, the QRF, made up of Green Berets and Marines, finally arrived at the refinery and unleashed a barrage of gunfire, turning the tide of the battle. But the QRF’s success was short-lived. Over the ridge, one of the Special Forces soldiers spotted the worst-case scenario:

Russian tanks slowly advanced toward the refinery.

‘I Made Peace With What Was About to Happen’

The Wagner Group, a private Russian military company, has been accused of committing war crimes in multiple conflicts around the world.

The accusations against the Wagner Group have been widely reported in the media and have been the subject of investigations by various human rights organizations. Recently, the leader of the Wagner Group said the mercenaries would leave Bakhmut, Ukraine, because they don’t have enough ammunition from the Russians to “grind the meat,” and that his company has lost “tens of thousands” of people in Ukraine.

The U.S. government has also imposed sanctions on the Wagner Group. In January 2023, the United States named the “Russian proxy” group a “transnational criminal organization.”

Despite the accusations, the Russian government has denied any official links to the Wagner Group and has dismissed the allegations of war crimes as baseless.

The Syrian battlefield was a confusing three-way shooting range, with American forces and their SDF allies battling ISIS fighters, even as pro-Syrian forces and their Wagner Group allies also hunted the terrorists. The oil-rich province of Deir al-Zour bordered Iraq. The Euphrates River divided the conflicting factions. Russia was on one side of the river, and the United States—and ISIS—on the other. It was often difficult to discern friend from foe, Josh says.

Andrew, a new team leader on his first deployment as a Special Forces officer, led the Special Forces team, which had cleared an area farther south. But they headed out again after seeing little activity. In the days leading up to the refinery attack, the Russians and Americans remained on opposite sides of the river.

The Russians planned to seize the oil refinery after arriving in Deir al-Zour governorate, Andrew says. A team of about 30 soldiers from Joint Special Operations Command was stationed at the refinery, while Andrew’s team and platoon of Marines were located at a mission support site 20 minutes away, monitoring drone feeds of the area.

At three p.m., the Russian-led force began to gather near the refinery, and by early evening, more than 500 troops and 27 vehicles, including tanks and armored personnel carriers, were in position.

The situation confounded military officers and intelligence analysts in the region and in Washington as they watched on drone feeds. Pilots and ground crews across the region went on alert, while Andrew and Chauncey—the Special Forces team sergeant—gathered the team and prepared the QRF.

Soldiers loaded three M-ATV armored trucks and an MRAP armored truck with equipment, ammunition, and food. They staged the convoy so the soldiers and Marines could race to the trucks and leave immediately. They checked their weapons and ensured each had extra ammunition and thermal optics. A Black Hawk with additional medical support arrived with extra blood for transfusions, Andrew says.

By nightfall, everyone was prepared for a fight, but hoped they wouldn’t have to be: The Special Forces armored trucks were no match for the Russian tanks.

At 8:30 p.m., three Russian-made T-72 tanks, weighing almost 50 tons and armed with 125 mm guns, moved to within a mile of the refinery. The Americans watched as artillery crews rehearsed firing the gun, but never loaded a shell, and soldiers massed near armored personnel carriers for an attack—alerting the Americans that the fighters were, in fact, Russian.

“I think part of the tell was that Russian doctrine says that they’re going to do things that look like exercises right up into the point,” says Josh, who monitored the Wagner Group’s movements through the drone feeds.

Around 10 p.m., the American soldiers at the outpost saw a column of tanks and other armored vehicles turn and drive toward the refinery from a nearby neighborhood where they had attempted to gather undetected. Andrew and Chauncey raced to where Chauncey’s team waited. They’d already loaded the trucks that evening.

“Hey men, the guys down there are getting attacked,” Chauncey said. “We have to go and respond.”

The five armored trucks peeled out of the outpost and down the road. They drove under blackout conditions—no headlights. An unarmored pickup truck with SDF troops led the team. The SDF forces didn’t have night vision, so it was difficult for them to navigate the road, which was littered with debris, crater holes, and giant dirt berms to create serpentine barriers around checkpoints.

“We’re hauling in the dark, and then, all of a sudden, you pump on these berms and it’s a mad dash to get slowed down and then serpentine through these berms and then get moving again,” Josh says.

As the Special Forces convoy approached the refinery, the Russian mercenaries and Syrian forces attacked the outpost, using a mixture of tank fire, large artillery, and mortar rounds.The air was filled with dust and shrapnel. The commandos crouched behind trucks or dirt berms as the Russian mercenaries advanced behind the artillery barrage.

One Predator was on station when the attack started. It fired all of its hellfire missiles, destroying the enemy artillery so the U.S. troops could focus on the ground fight. Then the Predator lingered over the battlefield to provide a video feed of the fighting to battle captains in the command center and officials in Washington.

For the first 15 minutes, American military officials in Washington worked to contact their Russian counterparts and urge them to stop the attack. When the Russians denied it was their forces, American troops fired warning shots at a group of vehicles and a howitzer, but the troops continued to advance.

The Wagner mercenaries had a surface-to-air system that made it impossible for American aircraft to press the attack. Only after officials in Washington talked to their Russian counterparts did the surface-to-air system get shut down, allowing American aircraft to return and attack.

The SDF truck leading the Special Forces convoy stopped short of the compound as artillery shells rained down on the refinery. Up ahead, the sky flashed with explosions and tracer fire. The SDF soldiers in the unarmored truck leading the convoy took one look, turned around, and took off.

Smartest man on the battlefield, Chauncey remembers thinking.

Others had the same reaction. Over the radio, they heard the American commando force in the refinery. Every time the commandos keyed their mics, explosions from incoming rounds drowned out their transmissions. It felt like being in the front row of an arena rock show. The commandos could feel the sound in their chests.

“I made peace with what was about to happen,” Josh says. “Because of what was coming over the radio, I was like, ‘We have to get there for our dudes.’”

Inside the compound, the commandos and their SDF allies were dug in. Without heavy weapons, they could do nothing but hunker down. During a lull in the artillery barrage, Andrew got on the radio with the commandos’ commander, who “sparkled” them into the perimeter using an infrared laser. Jumping from his truck to talk with the commandos’ commander, Andrew spotted defensive positions on the berm with commandos or SDF fighters next to six-foot craters where artillery shells had landed.

Miraculously, the small team of American troops emerged unscathed, with only one allied Syrian fighter wounded. The commandos’ commander was relieved to see the team.

“We’re just hiding behind the trucks eating artillery,” he told the Special Forces team.

But that was just the start. The Russians had a combined arms battalion of about 500 soldiers, tanks, armored personnel carriers, and artillery with support elements close by. The Americans now had a half-dozen trucks and fewer than 50 guys.

“The scale of this thing is a big part of this and why the air support was so critical,” Josh says.

Another wave of fighters were inbound, but not on station yet, as the Russians advanced.

“They’re not going to be here for a while,” the commando commander told Andrew. “Can you guys see?”

The commandos were lightly armed with only machine guns and small arms that lacked the range or punch to do real damage to the Russians. The five QRF trucks, armed with .50-caliber machine guns, could see the whole battlefield and had the range to engage the Russians advancing toward the refinery. The Special Forces trucks lined up behind the berm facing the advancing pro-Syrian troops and Wagner Group mercenaries.

The enemy opened fire with a twin-barrel anti-aircraft autocannon, sending a steady stream of shells into the compound.

As the trucks pulled into the defensive line, Chauncey got on the internal truck radio to rally the team.

“Hey, this is what we get paid for,” he remembers telling the three other Special Forces soldiers. “I want everybody to be alert, aware, like eyes open. If you see anything at all, give us a distance, direction, description of what you see. Call out what you see, and then we’ll make decisions on the fly and get busy.”

‘They’re Not Hitting Anything’

The Russian mercenaries left their vehicles and moved toward the outpost on foot. The Special Forces team used joysticks to fire the heavy machine guns in remote turrets on the roof.

Hey, these guys must think that they just annihilated this location, Chauncey remembers thinking as he watched the Russians approach. They’re just going to walk up and take it.

There were no friendly forces in front, so the gunners didn’t have to worry about hitting civilians. If it moved, it was likely an enemy, and they were cleared to engage.

“Let’s open up and let ‘em know we’re here,” Chauncey said.

Josh’s team in truck two tracked a small group of mercenaries about 1,000 meters from the trucks and closing. The gunner rotated the .50-caliber machine gun robotically stabilized on the roof. It could put thousands of rounds on target from more than 1,000 yards. Even on cyclic, where the gun doesn’t stop shooting until it runs out of bullets, it could maintain a grouping that fits on the hood of a small car.

“Laz these guys and shoot ‘em,” Josh said.

The gunner—an explosive ordnance disposal tech attached to the team—hit the trigger but didn’t depress the safety. After a few attempts to fire, Josh reached for the controller. Josh zeroed in on the group of Russian and pro-Syrian fighters and fired. The .50-caliber machine gun on top of the truck roared and the white-hot silhouettes of men approaching the berm exploded into parts scattered across the black sand.

Seconds after Josh cut down the group, the whole horizon lit up with machine gun fire. The rest of the Russian force, dug into hasty fighting positions after the airstrikes, hammered the berm with small arms and machine-gun fire. The Special Forces gunners marked Russian vehicles and fighting positions. It didn’t take long for the American machine guns to start “talking,” meaning there was no space between bursts as the different guns fired at the Russian positions. The wall of fire was steady and overwhelming, forcing the Wagner mercenaries and pro-Syrian forces to take cover.

“We’re a lot more accurate than they are,” Chauncey says. “We can see the sparks flying from hitting metal. We can see fighting positions getting shot up. We know that we are having good effects and we’re killing personnel.”

The terrain was baseball-diamond flat. Dirt from the berm kicked up in front of the trucks as the mercenaries and pro-Syrian forces advanced. But they didn’t hit any of the trucks. The Special Forces soldiers figured the Syrian soldiers and Russians lacked night vision.

“They can’t be that bad a shot,” Josh said. “They’re not hitting anything.”

Soon, the machine gun on Josh’s truck ran out of ammunition. A giant canister that held about 400 rounds sat next to the gun. To reload it, someone had to climb outside the truck amid a maelstrom of shrapnel and machine-gun bullets and feed belts of ammunition into the canister.

Three soldiers, including Josh, sat in the truck. The driver had to stay in case the truck needed to move. The EOD tech wasn’t trained to reload the gun. That left Josh. A hatch in the truck’s roof could split open. But the seal was so tight that, to open it, Josh would have to lie on his back in the center seat and kick it. And additional equipment and supplies crowded the roof.

He would have to risk the bullets and shrapnel.

Josh popped open his armored passenger side door and climbed onto the truck’s roof. The EOD tech handed him ammunition belts so he could connect them into a daisy chain and S-fold them into the container—otherwise the gun would jam.

Josh got to work reloading the canister, but his night vision scopes focused on a set distance, making close-in work difficult. He connected two belts—about 100 rounds—and was reaching for another belt when an artillery round landed nearby. The shockwave hit Josh in the chest, followed by an earth-shattering thud.

He needed to reload faster.

Flipping up his night vision goggles, he flicked on a headlamp with a red lens that hung around his neck so he could load the last belts. A few seconds after he turned on his light, he heard a chopping sound.

Tracers from the anti-aircraft cannon climbed into the air in line with the truck.

Why are they shooting tracers? Josh remembers wondering, just as it dawned on him that the tracers were aimed at his red light.

He flicked off the light and huddled down as the first rounds from the cannon arrived. The noise wasn’t the hard snap from a rifle but something deeper.

Guttural.

And loud.

It was so loud he couldn’t hear himself cackling as the shells passed overhead and landed harmlessly behind him. Josh knew he was in trouble. He couldn’t count on them to miss again.

He needed to get into the truck.

You idiot, he remembers thinking. You put your headlamp on. They just called your bluff. You put your light on. One could have had your number on it and there wouldn’t have been anything left to send back. I need to get the gun back up—and before I eat a Red Bull can-sized slug while I’m doing it.

He folded the last bands of ammunition into the canister and scrambled back into the armored crew compartment.

A few trucks away, Chauncey drew out his team’s positions and estimated where the Wagner Group positions were located on a piece of paper. He felt confident because, in his mind, they were winning. Then he got a call from one of the team’s trucks.

“Hey Zulu,” the Special Forces soldier said, using the team sergeant’s call sign.

“What’s up?” Chauncey said. “Go ahead. Send your traffic.”

“Hey, I got eyes on these really big vehicles.”

Chauncey knew what they were, but no one wanted to say it.

Russian tanks were advancing.

‘We’re Going to Stay and Fight’

Chauncey counted 10 tanks on the horizon. They moved forward slowly, one at a time.

“Gimme five rounds on that really big vehicle,” Chauncey said to the truck team that spotted the tanks.

On an older model tank, the .50 caliber might punch some holes through the armor. Not so on newer models. The bullets would bounce right off. If they had the newer models, the Special Forces team was in trouble.

“Roger that,” the gunner said over the radio, and opened fire.

Chauncey saw the tracers race across the black sky. Five rounds right on target. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom.

Followed by bing, bing, bing, bing, bing.

Chauncey hit his gunner on the leg.

“Hey, gimme five rounds on that tank that’s further to the west, further to our right.”

“Roger that, five rounds.”

The gunner rotated the machine gun above Chauncey’s head and fired. Five out. Five rounds bounced.

“Hey, truck two—get eyes on that center vehicle,” Chauncey radioed to Josh.

“Yep. Roger that.”

“Gimme five rounds.”

Same result.

They were in trouble.

The Russian tanks were about 2,000 meters away, which in a tank battle means close range. But the Russian crew lacked the night vision capability to move at speed. Andrew and Chauncey came up with a hasty plan: Without aircraft cover, they’d have to abandon the plant.

“Hey, what’s up with aircraft?” Chauncey asked Andrew.

He was fighting to get aircraft on station. Andrew called back to the commandos.

“Hey, you guys got anything?” he said.

No one had an answer on aircraft. Andrew didn’t know the Russians had an anti-aircraft missile system active, denying the airspace. Meanwhile, on the ground, the Special Forces team would die without help.

They had to slow down the tanks while the team and commandos consolidated and waited for air cover.

But Andrew knew they couldn’t leave. That would open the path for a large Russian force to continue north with nothing stopping it from reaching the American support base and controlling the region his team had just spent months clearing of ISIS. It also gave them access to a network of oil and natural gas refineries in the region.

“Keep shooting and marking anything armor with tracers for when aircraft checks in,” Andrew said.

Chauncey knew the team was united. They called the team a pirate ship because if anything happened, they were all going down together. And now facing tanks, that was a real chance. Despite recent showings on the battlefields of Ukraine, the tank is still an apex predator on the battlefield. The American Special Forces didn’t have a weapon that could stop them. It was like being stalked by a turtle. With every minute, the tanks slowly closed.

Chauncey keyed his mic.

“We’re going to stay and fight,” he told the team.

No one questioned the order. But privately, for the second time in the battle, Josh considered his chances of survival. He’d already tempted fate with his headlamp. It was only a matter of time before the tanks would be close enough to hit the MAT-V trucks, and despite being armored, they stood no chance against the tank’s 125 mm cannon.

“Everything that we’ve accomplished, and this is where everything ends,” Josh tells The War Horse. “Against Russian mercenaries with tanks. Not even the enemy that we came to fight. We had to make peace with the possibility of not making it back, but it was easier to swallow knowing we were defending our friends and doing what needed to be done.”

Despite long odds, the American trucks continued to fire at the oncoming tanks and Russian positions. The tank gun barrels flashed under the green hue of the night vision goggles as the shells whistled overhead. The Special Forces trucks sat on the berm, easy targets had the Russians been able to shoot at night. Despite closing, every tank round missed.

But the tanks were getting close, with one less than a kilometer away, despite a steady stream of fire from the American trucks.

From the corner of his eye, Chauncey saw a flash. The first tank, which had closed to less than a kilometer, exploded in a massive fireball.

“What the heck was that?”

He craned his neck to see out of the small, bullet-resistant windows. Before Chauncey got an answer, a tank farther to the west exploded as two pairs of Apache attack helicopters flew overhead. Once they cleared the berm, the attack helicopters opened fire with the chain gun under the cockpit, raking Russian fighting positions. The Special Forces team lit up the advancing tanks with machine gun fire as the Apaches circled for another run.

“As soon as they saw us shoot something, it blew up,” Chauncey said. “They cut through tanks, and they just came in and laid waste for the next probably 45 minutes. They just destroyed everything.”

The Apaches arrived just in time. Josh vividly remembers hearing the chain gun go off and then more rockets striking the tanks.

“I’m a full believer that without the air that responded to us on station, we all would’ve been a bunch of grease stains on the earth in a line in an oil field in Syria.”

‘Just Tighten Your Helmet and Lock the Doors’

Things were looking up when a battle captain in the command center radioed Andrew.

“Hey, just be advised, incoming bomber,” the battle captain said.

“Roger,” Andrew said, happy to have more air cover.

“No, dude,” the battle captain said. “Russian bomber inbound.”

American aircraft had superiority over Syria, but if the Russians were sending a bomber—that changed the battlefield calculus. Andrew got on the team net and warned them about the incoming bomber.

“Do what you want with it, but there’s nothing you can do,” Andrew said. “Just tighten your helmet and lock the doors.”

For the next several minutes, Andrew waited for the bomber. Would it drop or just buzz them? He’d survived a tank battle already, but this was worse. A 500-pound bomb would kill his whole team. Just before the bomber was supposed to arrive, the battle captain called back.

No bomber.

The Russians turned back.

An hour later, the Russian fighters started to retreat. Russian and American officials declared a cease-fire, and the Special Forces watched as the mercenaries and Syrian fighters returned to collect their dead. Bodies and burnt vehicles were laid out in front of them.

It was two hours to dawn. The team watched from the berm as the Russians cleared the field. The team ran an ammo check and cross-loaded supplies. Andrew ordered his men to rest and try to eat. Sleep in shifts if they could. But most were too jacked on adrenaline.

The next day, Chauncey saw coverage of the battle on CNN. It sounded clinical and watered down. Nothing like what he’d experienced the night before.

“We went through 4,000 or 6,000 rounds [of .50 caliber] that night,” Andrew says. “I think the total [battle damage assessment] after the fact was like 350 [killed].”

The exact casualty count for the Feb. 7 fight is unclear, but sources have estimated between 100 and 300 Russian and pro-Syrian fighters were killed or wounded in the battle. Russian officials claim only five Russian citizens died, but audio recordings of Wagner Group soldiers suggest hundreds of mercenaries were killed. One Wagner Group veteran confirmed the Apache attack in the recordings, describing it as “a fucking merry-go-round with heavy-caliber machine guns.”

“To make it short, we’ve had our fucking asses kicked,” one Wagner Group veteran says in a recording. “They tore us to pieces. … They beat our asses like we were little pieces of shit.”

Nine of the 10 tanks were destroyed, as well as all six artillery pieces. The Special Forces team destroyed the lone surviving tank a few days later.

“We did not sustain a single injury,” Chauncey says. “We didn’t sustain a single death. I mean, guys were dinged up. Guys had PTSD from that battle, but everyone made it home.”

This War Horse feature was reported by Kevin Maurer, edited by Kelly Kennedy, fact-checked by Jess Rohan, and copy-edited by Mitchell Hansen-Dewar. Headlines are by Abbie Bennett.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told the Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee that the U.S. had moved “a number of tanks over into theater” so the Ukrainians could begin training on them. By the time they complete the training, expected to last about 10 weeks, the Abrams tanks currently being built for the Ukrainian forces will be ready, he said.

A U.S. official said the 31 M1A1 Abrams tanks needed for the training arrived at the port in Bremerhaven, Germany, last weekend and they will get to the base by early this coming week. Their arrival at Grafenwoehr is a couple of weeks ahead of the schedule that was mapped out when military leaders from around Europe and elsewhere met in Germany last month to discuss Ukraine’s needs for the war against Russia.

The tanks the U.S. is providing Ukraine are being built to its military’s specifications and will get to Ukraine by early fall, just as the troops are finished with their instruction. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to provide details of the delivery not publicly released.

The tank training will be the latest and most lethal new layer of combat instruction the U.S. is providing Ukraine’s troops to give them the best chance to overwhelm and punch through Russia’s battle lines. Over the past few months U.S. troops have trained more than 8,800 Ukrainians, including on how to use Stryker and Bradley fighting vehicles and M109 Paladins together on the battlefield. The Bradleys and Strykers are armored and armed vehicles used to ferry troops, and the Paladin is a self-propelled howitzer gun.

During Thursday’s hearing, Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, pressed Austin to move quickly to get the tanks into Ukrainian troops’ hands and onto the battlefield.

“We are doing everything possible to accelerate the delivery of these tanks, and early fall is a projection,” Austin said.

Collins and others noted the urgency of the fight in Ukraine, and she told Austin and Army Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to be blunt about Ukraine’s needs. Defense leaders should not let budget concerns dissuade them from seeking more weapons if that’s what Kyiv needs to be successful in a counteroffensive, said Collins, the ranking Republican on the panel.

“It is critical that the administration provide Ukraine with what it needs in time to defend and take back its sovereign territory,” she said. “We expect the administration not to wait until the 11th hour if the Ukrainians seek more before the end of the fiscal year.”

Sen. Lindsay Graham, R-S.C., noting the broader implications of the war, questioned Milley on the impact a Russian victory could have on China and its deliberations on whether to move to take the self-governing island of Taiwan, which Beijing claims.

“I think that the Chinese are watching the war between Russia and Ukraine very carefully,” Milley said, adding that if Russian President Vladimir Putin succeeds, “China will learn certain lessons.”

“It may not be the single decisive point, but I think it will calculate into their decision-making process as to whether or not they attack to seize the island of Taiwan. So I think the outcome of Ukraine is critical to much broader issues than just Ukraine,” Milley said.