Politico reports:

The U.S. government is reportedly set to transfer Soviet-made tanks to support Ukrainian defense efforts against continued Russian attacks in the country’s east.

A government official in Washington told the New York Times on Friday that the decision of U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration had come as a response to requests by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to support his country’s war effort with military equipment, including tanks.

Following Zelenskyy’s appeals last week, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson had said it would be “very difficult” to supply Ukraine with tanks and jets, adding that NATO and G7 countries felt “agony” over their inability to help Ukraine more decisively.

But according to the Times report, while the official on Friday declined to say how many tanks would be sent, or from which countries they would come, the tanks would enable Ukraine to conduct long-range artillery strikes on Russian targets in Donbas, which contains the separatist provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk. The Kremlin has recognized the independence of the two provinces, using their defense as a pretext for invading Ukraine in February. [Continue reading…]

The New York Times reports:

The Russian forces that were intent on overwhelming Kyiv at the war’s start with tanks and artillery retreated under fire across a broad front on Saturday, leaving behind them dead soldiers and burned vehicles, according to witnesses, Ukrainian officials, satellite images and military analysts.

The withdrawal suggested the possibility of a major turn in the six-week war — the collapse, at least for now, of Russia’s initial attempt to seize Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, and the end of its hopes for the quick subjugation of the nation.

Moscow has described the withdrawal as a tactical move to regroup and reposition its forces for a major push in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine. While there are early indications that the military is following through on that plan, analysts say it cannot obscure the magnitude of the defeat.

“The initial Russian operation was a failure and one of its central goals — the capture of Kyiv — proved unobtainable for Russian forces,” Michael Kofman, the director of Russian studies at C.N.A., a research institute in Arlington, Va., said in a telephone interview Saturday.

Elsewhere in Ukraine, Russian attacks continued unabated, and the Pentagon has cautioned that the formations near Kyiv could be repositioning for renewed assaults. [Continue reading…]