KYIV, Ukraine — The U.S. and Germany pledged to send Ukraine some of the most advanced weapons yet as Russian forces waging a grinding offensive in the east Wednesday closed in on capturing a key city.

Germany said Wednesday it will supply Ukraine with modern anti-aircraft missiles and radar systems, and the U.S. planned to unveil a new weapons package later in the day that includes high-tech, medium-range rocket systems.

The U.S. is trying to strike a balance by helping Ukraine battle ferocious Russian artillery barrages while not providing weapons that could allow Ukraine to hit targets deep inside Russia and trigger an escalation in the war.

The Kremlin accused the U.S. of “pouring fuel on the fire.”

Western arms have been critical to Ukraine’s success in stymieing Russia’s much larger and better-equipped military, thwarting its effort to storm the capital and forcing Moscow to shift its focus to the industrial Donbas region in the east.

But as Russia bombards towns in its inching advance in the east, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has repeatedly pleaded for more and better weapons and accused the West of moving too slowly. Military analysts say Russia is hoping to overrun the Donbas before any weapons that might turn the tide arrive.

But the new arms could help Ukraine set up and hold new lines of defense in the east by hitting back at Russian artillery pieces that have been battering towns and cities and by limiting Russian airstrikes, said French retired Gen. Dominique Trinquand, a former head of France’s military mission at the United Nations.

“The NATO countries — the European nations and the Americans — have progressively escalated the means that they are putting at Ukraine’s disposal, and this escalation, in my opinion, has had the aim of testing Russian limits,” he said. “Each time, they measure the Russian reaction, and since there is no reaction, they keep supplying increasingly effective and sophisticated weaponry.”

Germany has come under particular criticism, both at home and from allies abroad, that it isn’t doing enough.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz told lawmakers that the surface-to-air IRIS-T SLM missiles it will send are the most modern air defense system the country has. They can operate at longer ranges than the Cold War-era anti-aircraft equipment it previously provided.

“With this, we will enable Ukraine to defend an entire city from Russian air attacks,” he said. The radar systems Germany is sending will help Ukraine locate enemy artillery.

In addition to the rocket systems, the U.S. package will include helicopters, Javelin anti-tank weapons, tactical vehicles, spare parts and more, two senior administration officials said. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to preview the package before it was formally unveiled.

One official noted that the advanced rocket systems will give Ukrainian forces greater precision in targeting Russian forces inside Ukraine. The rockets, which have a range of about 50 miles (80 km) and are highly mobile, will allow Ukrainian troops to disrupt Russian supply lines, said another Western official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The U.S. has received assurances that Ukraine will not fire rockets into Russian territory, according to the senior administration officials.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Moscow does not trust such assurances.

“We believe that the U.S. is deliberately and diligently pouring fuel on the fire,” he said.

The announcements came as a regional governor said Russian forces now control 70% of Sievierodonetsk, a city that is key to Moscow’s efforts to complete its capture of the Donbas, where Ukrainian forces and Russian-backed separatists have fought for years and where the separatists held swaths of territory even before the invasion.

Luhansk Gov. Serhiy Haidai said Ukrainian and Russian forces were battling it out in the streets.

The only other city in Luhansk that the Russians have not yet captured, Lysychansk, is still fully under Ukrainian control, he said, but is likely to be next.

“If the Russians manage to take full control over Sievierodonetsk within two to three days, they will start installing artillery and mortars and will shell Lysychansk more intensively,” Haidai said.

Zelenskyy, meanwhile. said the country is losing between 60 and 100 soldiers a day in the fighting.

In southern Ukraine, a regional governor sounded a more positive note, saying Russian troops are retreating and blowing up bridges behind them.

“They are afraid of a counterattack by the Ukrainian army,” Vitaliy Kim, governor of the Mykolayiv region, said on the Telegram messaging app.

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Jordans reported from Berlin. Associated Press writers Yuras Karmanau in Lviv, Ukraine, Lolita C. Baldor in Washington and Jill Lawless in London contributed to this report.

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

AP

JUNE 1, 2022

https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-kyiv-technology-4f8e7d017b5fd67d80fb42d23b27b3c1