He sure looks like a guy about to suffer a heart attack.

Prigozhin Has Already Started Work on Brand New ‘Threat’

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news...w-threat/ar-AA1d452t

Field camps were under construction in Belarus on Monday for Wagner mercenaries fighting under Yevgeny Prigozhin, who was just exiled to the country following his attempted mutiny in Russia, according to independent Russian news outlet Verstka.

“We are working, we are already working today. Tomorrow, before lunch, the task is to [build],” one source told Vertska.

One relative of a Wagner fighter told the outlet they were told they would be sent to Belarus.

The camps under design are reportedly preparing for 8,000 beds, will stretch 24,000 square meters (258,334 square feet), and will be about 120 miles from Belarus’ border with Ukraine.

Prigozhin ordered his troops to march on Moscow over the weekend, threatening to remove Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu over the way Shoigu has handled the war in Ukraine. And although Prigozhin called off the rebellion after negotiating with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Belarusian strongman Alexander Lukashenko to broker a deal that dropped criminal charges against Prigozhin and left him exiled to Belarus, the fate of Prigozhin and his Wagner mercenary group remains uncertain.

The Daily Beast has not been able to verify the reports of the construction in Belarus. But the report of new field camps comes days after the Kremlin hinted that Wagner could be dissolved moving forward, and could provide some clues as to the future of Prigozhin’s mercenary fighters.

Prigozhin had announced he had called his troops back to the field camps in Ukraine, where they have been working to stage attacks against Ukrainians. It was not immediately clear if all of the troops headed for Ukraine, however.

And with possible field camps in Belarus, Prigozhin may be able to continue operating Wagner after all, just days after they staged the largest challenge to Putin’s decades-long hold on power in Russia.

Belarus has been providing Russia a staging ground for their war in Ukraine since Russia’s invasion last year. Lukashenko, whose leadership of Belarus has devolved into serving as a puppet of Putin in recent years, has vowed to continue to allow Russia to use Belarusian territory.

Just how much of a threat Wagner and Prigozhin, a former close ally of Putin, will be able to pose to Putin’s grip on power remains to be seen. It’s not clear if potential Wagner camps in Belarus would be a threat to Russia.

Given the nature of Lukashenko’s relationship with Putin, it’s unlikely that Lukashenko will sanction Prigozhin-led activities in Belarus without Putin knowing about them, and approving of them, Kenneth Yalowitz, a former U.S. ambassador to Belarus, told The Daily Beast.

“Putin might have dictated the terms to Lukashanko. I kind of doubt that Lukashenko could have committed Putin to all these things… without Putin’s ascent,” Yalowitz said.

Questions had already begun to bubble up over whether Prigozhin will be able to stage attacks from Belarus; Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said Poland is boosting defensive preparations on its borders with Belarus and “anticipating attacks.” It’s also unclear if Prigozhin will be able to stage attacks against Ukraine as well.

But with 25,000 Wagner troops, much of Prigozhin’s future still hangs in the balance.

Prigozhin at this point is a “wild card,” Yalowitz said, and could potentially pose a problem for Lukashenko too.

“If they’ve evacuated into Belarus, what’s their purpose? I mean, you know, they could be a threat to Lukashenko as well,” he said. “For Lukashenko, you would have, in effect, almost like Russian troops occupying Belarus, and that will not go down very well with his public.”

Some Wagner troops might be headed to work for the Russian Ministry of Defense. As part of the agreement that has exiled Prigozhin, Wagner troops that didn’t back the rebellion are to be offered contracts with the conventional Russian military.

It’s a stipulation that echoes earlier efforts by Russia’s Ministry of Defense to force Wagner fighters into the conventional military—efforts that Prigozhin himself had rebuffed and could have contributed to his motivation to stage the mutiny.

In the meantime, there are indications that Putin is still working to dampen Prigozhin and Wagner’s power. Russia is cracking down on private military companies (PMCs) like Wagner, according to Andrei Kartapolov, the head of the State Duma Defense Committee. Kartapolov said Monday he is working on drafting a bill that will regulate PMCs more.

But he predicted nothing would change before the autumn, according to state-owned media outlet TASS.

Authorities shut down Prigozhin’s social media page on Vkontakte, and several recruiting sites were shuttered as well, according to TASS.

For now, Wagner is recruiting in Novosibirsk, according to TASS. And a Wagner staff member confirmed the group is working to operate normally, according to Fontanka SPB Online.

“Everything remains unchanged for us,” the staffer said. “We are working as usual.”

Recruits are being offered 240,000 rubles, or around $2,800, plus a bonus if they make it to Ukraine, according to Fontanka SPB Online.

Meanwhile, although Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Russia had dropped charges against Prigozhin for starting the mutiny, a criminal probe is ongoing, TASS reported. The FSB continues to investigate Prigozhin, according to Kommersant and other Russian outlets.

Signs emerged Monday that Prigozhin may be working to spin his mutiny as an act of defense, rather than a rebellion. In an audio recording, he claimed he staged the rebellion following an attack on his troops, to prevent Wagner from getting shut down.

“We started our march because of an injustice,” he said, according to an AP translation.

The goal was “not toppling the Russian authorities,” he said, according to the War Translated project.

And although the Kremlin said Prigozhin’s personal security is a “guarantee” of Putin’s, Prigozhin is not necessarily safe from Putin’s hitmen moving forward.

“There are just questions everywhere. Is Prigozhin a man who is going to be hunted down in Belarus?” Yalowitz said. “With 10,000 troops at his disposal, he's not going to be a very easy target to take down.”

It’s unlikely Prigozhin will go belly-up for Lukashenko at this stage, Yalowitz predicted.

“Would he be loyal to Lukashanko? No. He’s not going to be loyal. He’ll be loyal to himself,” he said.

Prigozhin’s whereabouts were uncertain as of Monday. He was seen leaving Rostov-on-Don in southern Russia on Saturday after announcing he was calling off the rebellion. Unconfirmed reports circulated Monday suggesting he had been spotted in Minsk, the Belarussian capital.

Lukashenko’s press service said Monday it did not know if Prigozhin had arrived in Belarus.



Putin Speaks Publicly for 1st Time Since Wagner Mutiny Ended

https://www.theepochtimes.com/...-27&utm_medium=email

"Putin said most of the Wagner fighters were patriots and that “by turning back, they avoided further bloodshed.”

"He added that he would let Wagner fighters relocate to Belarus if they wished, sign contracts with the defense ministry, or simply return to their families."

More at link

An opinion piece from The Wall Street Journal.

(And for the students of history, how many of the dates and other references, including the title, do you understand?)
=========================================

The Riddle, Mystery and Enigma of Prigozhin’s Coup Attempt

One thing is clear: The U.S. was right to support Ukraine after Putin’s invasion last year.

Watching events unfold in Russia this weekend was like viewing an accelerated newsreel of modern Russian history.

For a while it was 1917 all over again, with a little 1905 and 1989 thrown in. A revolution erupting after a disastrous foreign war. In his remarks on Saturday, Vladimir Putin invoked the 1917 precedent, revealing that he sees himself as more Nicholas II than Vladimir Lenin.

Then there was the symbolic spectacle of a lightning march on Moscow. As social-media feeds filled with images of military convoys rolling along highways and pictures of defensive bulwarks hauled into place at the gates to the capital, it was suddenly a re-enactment of 1812 or 1941. Unlike Napoleon and Hitler, Yevgeny Prigozhin seemed to have gotten his timing right, bearing down on the city in the accommodating midsummer sun.

As the climax seemed to near, an optimist could see hints of 1953 and the death of Stalin—the decades-long rule of a brutal dictator ending in chaos and ignominy, accompanied by the merest hope of something springlike to follow. Somewhat disappointingly, it turned out to be 1991, another dime-store coup that folded like a cheap suit on its first encounter with reality. Unlike that final, desperate bid to rescue communism from the ash heap of history, this one didn’t last even a few days. No detention of the beleaguered leader in his Black Sea dacha, no drunken infighting among the coup plotters. Just a few fiery words, some video vignettes, and it was back to barracks, boys.

Everything that happens in Russia elicits a library of conspiracy theories. Even some Western officials, as they attempted to digest this strange spectacle, wondered if it all might have been staged. Mr. Putin is a master of false-flag operations. Was this a scheme to demonstrate the calm invincibility of the great leader, a warning that as he faces down his enemies at home, he will show the same resilience abroad? There was even room for a helpful cameo role for Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus, Mr. Putin’s most faithful stooge, to burnish his fading credentials as hero of the Soviet Union.

You could be forgiven for believing anything. But this seems improbable. It’s hard to see how it helps the Russian leader to have his leadership denounced by a close ally and then, after he had threatened to demolish the mutineers, to sign up to what amounts to a gentle plea bargain.

More likely the sheer impossibility of his supposed mission became evident to Mr. Prigozhin and he took whatever bargain he could to extricate himself and settled for spending the rest of his days in the lovely idyll of Belarus, where he is doubtless being lined up for an early appointment at an open window in a tall building. The image Mr. Putin’s Russia presented these last few days isn’t one of strength but of a crumbling husk of a former empire, and its main value should be as a powerful rebuttal to the strange little army of Putin apologists in the U.S.

It will be some time before we understand what just happened and what it portends for Mr. Putin, his regime and the war in Ukraine. But we can surely already see that the abortive Wagner mutiny has revealed how wrong the critics of America’s support for the war have been.

Mr. Prigozhin’s denunciation of the invasion and the official Russian casus belli is a rebuke to the voices in the West who blamed the U.S. and its allies for the Russian violence. If even the Wagner Group’s leadership can see through the official Kremlin fictions, is it too much to ask that prominent American political leaders and so-called strategic thinkers cease peddling them?

The weekend coup attempt should also quiet the voices of those who argue that U.S. support for Ukraine is some distraction from the larger challenge of China. The longer this war continues, the more damage is done to Russia’s capability and prestige, and the more ineptitude it exposes in Moscow, the greater the headache for its ally “without limits” in Beijing.

It is clearer than ever that Xi Jinping has shackled himself to a twitching corpse, one booby-trapped with nuclear weapons, but a dead weight all the same. Long live that alliance.

A retired senior military figure told me recently that for years a key aim of U.S. military strategy has been to develop weapons designed to inflict maximum damage on Russian tanks, armored personnel carriers and artillery. As he noted with a grim smile, that is exactly what those munitions have been doing—with the added bonus that not a single American life has been put at risk.

Why would we stop inflicting that damage on China’s biggest ally now? And now that the Putin regime’s enfeebled rottenness has been laid bare, why wouldn’t we intensify our efforts to help Ukraine pursue its justified defense to a logical conclusion?

FREE EXPRESSION

By Gerard Baker

LINK

The only clarity to come from this, is that it's overwhelmingly 'Clear as Mud' as to what's happening over there, and why we're supporting it, with THE MAJOR FOCUS of US policy on prolonging the war, and NOT promoting peace! And that ought to be abundantly clear!

Saw this posted online elsewhere, a humorous take on this whole bizarre affair from a U.S. perspective:

A jet linked to Wagner Group chief Yevgeny Prigozhin landed in Belarus from Russia on Tuesday, days after he called off his armed rebellion against the Russian military.

Flight tracking website Flightradar24 showed an Embraer Legacy 600 jet, bearing identification codes that match a plane linked to Prigozhin in U.S. sanctions documents, descending to landing altitude near the Belarus capital Minsk, Reuters reported. It first appeared on the tracking site above Rostov, the southern Russian city Prigozhin's fighters captured on Saturday.

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko confirmed the jet carried Prigozhin to exile after the Kremlin said it made a deal where Prigozhin would move to Belarus and his fighters would not be prosecuted. Lukashenko said Tuesday that Prigozhin has moved to Belarus and that Wagner Group troops would be welcome to stay in the country "for some time" at their own expense, according to the Associated Press.

Russian authorities announced Tuesday a criminal investigation into the Wagner Group's purported mutiny has been closed, with no charges filed against anyone involved.

https://www.foxnews.com/world/...-mutiny-just-protest

There’s no way in hell Yevgeny Prigozhin is going to be on this side of the dirt for very long.

Poisoned umbrella tip? Polonium tea? Unfortunate fall from a building? I hope this former hot dog vender turned corporate chef turned private army warlord has good and loyal security.

quote:

Wagner chief Prigozhin is warned 'be very careful around open windows'

He better have anything he drinks checked for radiation, too ...

https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/27...utin-intl/index.html


Belarus President Aleksandr Lukashenko claims he convinced Russian leader Vladimir Putin not to “destroy” the Wagner group and its chief Yevgeny Prigozhin, talking up his role in halting the mercenaries’ military insurrection that caused crisis in Russia at the weekend.

Lukashenko on Tuesday described his view of the negotiations that led to Prigozhin ending his march towards Moscow, and said the oligarch is now in Belarus per the deal.

“The most dangerous thing, as I understand it, is not what the situation was, but how it could develop and its consequences,” Lukashenko said, according to Belarussian state media.

“I also realized there was a harsh decision taken - to destroy. I suggested Putin not to hurry. Let’s talk with Prigozhin, with his commanders.”

Lukashenko – a longtime ally of the Russian President – said Putin told him: “Listen, Alex, it’s useless. (Prigozhin) doesn’t even pick up the phone, he doesn’t want to talk to anyone.”

But Lukashenko said he managed to get hold of the Wagner boss and, according to his account, warned he would be “crushed like a bug” if Wagner troops continued their advance to the Russian capital.

“We talked for the first round of 30 minutes in a swear language. Exclusively. There were 10 times more swear words (I later analyzed them) than normal vocabulary,” Lukashenko added, describing his interactions with a foul-mouthed Prigozhin.

“Of course, he apologized in advance, and began to tell me everything using these obscene words.”

The Kremlin has credited Lukashenko with helping to deescalate the situation, though the Belarus leader’s account of events has not been corroborated by Putin or Prigozhin.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Lukashenko was able to draw on a personal relationship with Prigozhin to reach the deal, which would also see Wagner troops and equipment absorbed by the Russian military.

Russia’s Federal Security Service meanwhile said it would drop a case against Wagner fighters over the apparent uprising.

Prigozhin’s rebellion marked a sudden and dramatic escalation of his long-running feud with Russia’s military commanders.

He seized control of a southern military headquarters and directed his private Wagner troops towards Moscow, and demanded the resignation of defense minister Sergei Shoigu – a call that Lukashenko says he eventually backed down from during discussions.

While Putin survived the events, his standing appears significantly weakened. In an address on Monday, the Russian leader thanked the mercenaries for making the “right decision” in halting their advance, and offered them contracts to join the Russian ministry of defense’s force. He also claimed that the “armed rebellion would have been suppressed anyway,” without specifying how.

Lukashenko said Tuesday that Prigozhin has received his personal assurances of safety, and the safety of his men, in order to defuse the rebellion on Saturday evening.

“At five o’clock in the evening he called me and said: “…I accept all your conditions. But … What should I do? We stop - they will destroy us.” I say: “They won’t. I guarantee you. I’ll take it upon myself,” Lukashenko recalled.

Opinion piece from The Wall Street Journal.
========================

Russia’s Godfather Is Losing It

Putin is too weak to win the war and also too weak to end it.

The signature of Vladimir Putin’s rule has been the export of Russia’s creative, entrepreneurial, ambitious people until there was one left, Yevgeny Prigozhin.

The process culminated with the flight of Russia’s technical and business talent amid the Ukraine war. It began with Mr. Putin’s attack on the most successful and creative of the oligarchs, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, in 2003. Like Mr. Prigozhin, who started as a hot-dog vendor, Mr. Khodorkovsky operated a café. He expanded into energy and his crime was seeing a political role for himself based on his oil wealth. His biggest mistake, apparently, was not having a private army.

In the subsequent legal charade, which saw Mr. Khodorkovsky jailed and his assets redistributed to regime cronies, a question was Mr. Putin’s real agency. Originally maneuvered into position by oligarchs looking to protect their Yeltsin-era wealth, Mr. Putin’s rise was cemented by terrorist bombings that killed hundreds of Russian apartment dwellers in their beds and are now believed to have been carried out by his own supporters with or without his knowledge.

Ditto murders of journalists, critics and opposition politicians, including some who insisted on investigating the bombings. Were these outrages authored by Mr. Putin or by those trying to control him?

The echo in Mr. Prigozhin’s method in the recent uprising is hard to ignore. He rose to a sudden celebrity status via his public commentary on the failings of the Ukraine war, understood over and over to be his way of communicating with and trying to manipulate Mr. Putin.

Tellingly, amid a supposedly “existential” war, behind this week’s showdown was a standard Putin-era battle over money and graft, which was also the source of the war itself, Mr. Prigozhin explained in one of his videos. He was only acting to stop rival kingpins, Sergei Shoigu and Valery Gerasimov of the Ministry of Defense, from stealing his major asset, his Wagner mercenary force, by incorporating it into the Russian military.

It has always paid to focus on the true nature of the Putin regime rather than the Russian political and geographic imperatives that realists talk about.

Mr. Putin dreams of Peter the Great, but his retinue resembles the “prat” British gangsters who populate a Guy Ritchie movie. The very nature of his regime drove his neighbors toward NATO, which might otherwise have become vestigial. Only state cronies thrive in his economy dominated by the pursuit of graft opportunities. From local entrepreneurs to BP and Ikea, investors learned that to build something in Russia was to risk having it stolen by the regime.

From early on, he lacked a retirement strategy, meaning he would have to stay around forever and grow calcified in office. When he couldn’t give his people hope of European style prosperity and freedoms, he gave them military adventures and “national enemies.”

And now even his leverage over his sub-bosses is starting to deteriorate, because he no longer is able to solve any real problem. He only creates them, such as launching a war in Ukraine on the misinformed premise that Ukrainians would surrender.

Mr. Prigozhin is the most off-kilter of the Putin elite but the first to say the war was launched on false pretenses. Ukraine and NATO weren’t threatening Russia. There were no “Nazis.” For all his wrong-side-of-the-tracks ambience, Mr. Prigozhin channels what every respectable regime official thinks. The truth seeps even into the propagandistic coverage of Russia’s state-controlled TV. And Mr. Putin’s attempt to brace up his godfather system this week by invoking the dignity and legalism of the state hardly helped. It was better calibrated to suggest a dictator’s wishful thinking than to show he has any answers.

Mr. Prigozhin’s fate remains up in the air, but he enjoys bargaining chips Mr. Khodorkovsky lacked, as when his employees shot down several aircraft seeking to interfere with their protest “march of justice” to Moscow. Despite the apparent amnesty afforded by Mr. Putin to end the showdown, will Mr. Prigozhin now fall out of a window as other inconvenient Putin associates have? I am more skeptical than some. Would somebody be able to place hands on him? Would they dare? What’s in it for them? Mr. Putin faces risks whichever way he turns in the still-unfinished crisis; by a strange logic, Mr. Prigozhin may even have bought himself some immunity by putting elite doubts about the war officially on the record.

At the same time, a weak Putin is even less likely to make peace. He is also less likely to be able to order the apparently strengthened Messrs. Shoigu and Gerasimov to undertake any more hopeless fantasy offensives in pursuit of ultimate victory. Expect paralysis in Moscow and defensive inertia in the war. With the ending yet to be written, the final chapter is likely to exhibit the same elements of burlesque that characterized internal Russian politics this week.

By Holman W. Jenkins, Jr.

LINK

quote:

Expect paralysis in Moscow and defensive inertia in the war. With the ending yet to be written, the final chapter is likely to exhibit the same elements of burlesque that characterized internal Russian politics this week.

I don't disagree... but although Putin may have a final chapter, will Russian aggression ever have a final chapter?

No foreign policy expert here, but does Zelenskyy give anyone else a eurotrash Fidel Castro vibe?

Yesterday, the United States’ alleged commander in chief confirmed that Russian President Vladimir Putin, personally, “is clearly losing the war in Iraq.”

Iraq! Too bad about the Ukrainians though.

https://twitter.com/disclosetv.../1674062124245549056

Or, Biden is clearly losing the war against dementia, the silent killer.

Meanwhile, the literal personification of democracy himself, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, has suspended elections in that Eastern European outpost of freedom, Ukraine:

Elections in Ukraine will be held in 2024 only if martial law is ended by then, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in an interview with the BBC on June 22.

Zelenskyy emphasized that according to the Ukrainian constitution, no elections could be held in the country while martial law remains in effect.

He expressed hope that there would be peace in Ukraine next year, and life would be returning to normal.

https://www.coffeeandcovid.com...ack&utm_medium=email

quote:

Originally posted by chellim1:
Yesterday, the United States’ alleged commander in chief confirmed that Russian President Vladimir Putin, personally, “is clearly losing the war in Iraq.”

Too bad it didn't happen before Beau got it in combat over there.

Milley Admits Counteroffensive Slower Than Predicted, As Top Ukraine General Blames Lack Of F-16s

https://www.zerohedge.com/mili...al-blames-lack-f-16s

General Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has once again weighed in on the progress of Ukraine's counteroffensive, saying it has gotten off to a slower than expected start, but that this is not entirely surprising.

"This [counteroffensive] is happening more slowly than people predicted. I am not surprised by this. They [Ukrainian troops ] are advancing confidently, purposefully, making their way through very difficult minefields," he said.

He added that this is "part of the nature of war" and emphasized before an audience at the National Press Club in Washington that "war on paper and real war are different things".

"Ukrainians are fighting for their existence. They are fighting against a huge country with a population of 140 million and a large army that has a lot of military equipment," Milley said in the comments issued at the end of the week. He reaffirmed that the US government is helping Ukraine in every way possible.

He was also asked about his initial assessment last month as the much-anticipated offensive had kicked off. "What I had said was this is going to take six, eight, ten weeks. It’s going to be very difficult. It’s going to be very long and it’s going to be very, very bloody," he explained.

"No one should have any illusions about any of that," he added, and described that Russia's significant mine-laying capabilities have made things slow and daunting.

By most accounts, Ukraine also failed to capitalize on the turmoil inside Russia brought on by last weekend's Wagner rebellion. Kiev is already blaming lack of weapons, despite the tens of billions in defense aid sent thus far.

This week, the commander of the Ukrainian armed forces, General Valery Zaluzhny, was quoted extensively in The Washington Post. He is begging for more weapons:

For Ukraine’s counteroffensive to progress faster, Gen. Valery Zaluzhny, the top officer in Ukraine’s armed forces, says he needs more — of every weapon. And he is telling anyone who will listen, including his American counterpart Gen. Mark A. Milley as recently as Wednesday, that he needs those resources now.

In a rare, wide-ranging interview with The Washington Post, Zaluzhny expressed frustration that while his biggest Western backers would never launch an offensive without air superiority, Ukraine still has not received modern fighter jets but is expected to rapidly take back territory from the occupying Russians. American-made F-16s, promised only recently, are not likely to arrive until the fall — in a best-case scenario.

His troops also should be firing at least as many artillery shells as their enemy, Zaluzhny said, but have been outshot tenfold at times because of limited resources.

Recent reports have suggested that the training program which will eventually put Ukrainian pilots inside F-16s hasn't even begun, which is expected at some point this month.

Meanwhile, former US Assistant Secretary of Defense for Policy and Plans Graham Allison has written that at the rate things are going, it would take the Ukrainians many years to regain lost territory even assuming an unlimited supply of weaponry and advanced systems:

To put the matter in perspective: Today, Russia controls about 17 percent of the territory that was previously Ukraine’s. If Ukrainian forces are no more successful in the weeks ahead than they have been so far, Ukraine will not recapture all of its territory for 16 years.

Previously, Pentagon generals, including Milley himself, were on record as saying the stalemated conflict could drag on for multiple years to come. And yet still, few in the West are actually talking about how to get Kiev and Moscow to engage at the negotiating table.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: wcb6092,

Think he is off a little on the number of years.

Zelensky Implores Military To "Show Results" Before NATO Summit Amid Waning Enthusiasm In West

https://www.zerohedge.com/geop...ning-enthusiasm-west

In a rare public sign of desperation, Ukraine's President Vladimir Zelensky is pleading for his military to "show results" ahead of the major NATO summit to be convened in Lithuania on July 11. This comes amid rumblings out of Washington that US arms to Kiev could slow or be cut if Ukrainian forces are incapable of advancing.

Over the weekend Zelensky spoke to several journalists and addressed the past several days of headlines out of the West which have suggested the counteroffensive could be failing. He explained that "torrential rains" had "slowed down some processes quite a bit" - but that the reality still is that "every kilometer" of liberated territory and gains "costs lives".

He urged more Western weapons while blaming that gains from last fall had been lost in part because of the late arrival of artillery. His top generals have also been complaining about lack of air superiority, while continuing to press for F-16 fighter jets.

"We stopped because we couldn’t advance. Advancing meant losing people and we had no artillery," he asserted in the press briefing. "We are very cautious in this aspect. Fast things are not always safe."

He then emphasized that he has a duty to his troops and to not take risks that are unnecessary: "If they tell me that two months will pass and thousands of people will die, or three months and fewer people will die, of course, I will choose the latter," Zelensky said. "Between time and people, the most important thing is people."

Related to the pressing urgency of more and continued Western military support, Zelensky specifically called out Republicans in US Congress. Again this comes against the backdrop of Kiev's concerns over waning enthusiasm for the war effort out of Washington and the West at a sensitive moment of NATO's annual summit.

He slammed the "dangerous messages coming from some Republicans" - but praised the Thursday visit of former Vice President Mike Pence.

"Mike Pence has visited us, and he supports Ukraine. First of all, as an American, and then as a Republican," Zelensky said. "We have bipartisan support. However, there are different messages in their circles regarding support for Ukraine. There are messages coming from some Republicans, sometimes dangerous messages, that there may be less support."

He stressed that maintaining bipartisan support is "the most important thing for Ukraine" regardless of who wins the 2024 US presidential election. He also at one point said, "NATO without Ukraine is not NATO." The UK has meanwhile remained the most outspoken advocate of Kiev's entry into NATO, while Germany and the US have voiced caution and reluctance on the question of eventual full membership.

With the NATO summit now less than ten days away, the race is on for Ukraine's forces to "show results".