Watch the full interview with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin at 6 p.m. ET on “The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer.”
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told CNN Thursday he believed the new policy allowing the Ukrainian military to carry out limited strikes inside Russia with US munitions will be “very, very helpful to the Ukrainians going forward.”
“[W]hat we have done is provided Ukraine the ability to counter fire, to fire back at those Russian troops that are firing at them and to be able to take out their artillery batteries as they’re firing at the Ukrainians,” Austin told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on “The Situation Room.”
Austin spoke with CNN from Normandy, France, where he has joined other world leaders for the 80th anniversary of D-Day, including President Joe Biden, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. CQ Brown, and more than 20 other heads of state including French President Emmanuel Macron, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
Austin’s comments came days after Biden gave Ukraine permission to strike inside Russian territory — though limiting it to targets close to the border of Kharkiv where Russian forces have been concentrating their efforts — with US munitions.
Asked about waning support in the US, Austin said he believed there has been “strong support for Ukraine” among both political parties, despite how long it took for Congress to pass its security aid package for the embattled country and emphasized that Russian President Vladimir Putin likely won’t stop at Ukraine.
“I was confident that the right thing was going to happen, because anytime you see that type of support on both sides of the aisle for a cause, Congress will find a way to get things done. Which is what they did in this case, because it’s the right thing to do,” he said. “And Ukraine matters … not just for Ukraine’s purposes alone, not for Europe alone — it matters for to us and it matters to the entire globe. So, we have to make sure that Putin doesn’t have the ability to trample Ukraine because as the president said there’s a good chance, almost certain, that Putin won’t stop there. He will continue to move forward in other acts of aggression.”
This story is breaking and will be updated.
