The Pentagon will meet with major military contractors to plan aid for Ukraine.
A top U.S. defense official said on Tuesday that the Pentagon would convene a classified meeting with the leaders of the biggest American military contractors on Wednesday to discuss stepped-up assistance to Ukraine, including ways to improve air defenses, anti-ship missiles, and weapons to find and destroy Russian artillery.
Washington’s $1.7 billion in assistance to Ukraine since the start of Russia’s invasion, including the provision of thousands of Stingers and Javelin missiles, has forced American military contractors to step up production of older weapons systems, both for Ukraine’s need and to replenish the United States military’s stocks.
The Pentagon is now examining what additional longer-range weapons to supply to Ukraine, as well as making sure that the government in Kyiv receives the basics it needs, like additional artillery shells. U.S. military officials want American military contractors to begin work on supplying Ukraine for a possible long conflict with Russia.
The meeting on Wednesday, announced by Kathleen H. Hicks, the deputy secretary of defense, will include leaders of eight large military contractors, such as Raytheon Company and Lockheed Martin Corporation. The meeting will discuss how to overcome any potential supply problems — both to replenish American weapons stocks that have been drawn down to help Ukraine and to keep Kyiv supplied as the war continues.
The Pentagon is working with the American companies to identify which of them has the right military capabilities for Ukraine and can “move expeditiously to get it in there,” Ms. Hicks said.
“What can we do to help them?” she told reporters at a meeting of the Defense Writers Group. “What do they need to generate supply?”
Ms. Hicks did not discuss specific weapon systems that the United States would supply. But other defense officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the agenda of the classified meeting, said the discussions would focus on weaponry in five areas.
Improving Ukraine’s air defenses and its ability to shoot down Russian aircraft is one of Kyiv’s most urgent concerns. In addition, the United States is looking at how to improve Ukraine’s coastal defenses, such as with missiles that can be fired at Russian ships, and Ukraine’s supply of anti-personnel weapons, like Claymore mines and other weapons, used to kill enemy infantry. The Pentagon also wants contractors to examine demining equipment and counter-battery technology, radar that can track and locate enemy artillery, that Ukraine could use.
Ms. Hicks said U.S. officials were in a “continual dialogue” with Ukraine and American allies about how best to provide the equipment that Ukraine had requested. Ms. Hicks said some of the most important supplies it needs are the basics: artillery rounds and other forms of ammunition.
But she added that the United States would continue to look at other capabilities the Ukrainians have requested “to give them a little more range and distance.”
A Kharkiv area had avoided the worst of the shelling. That changed on Tuesday.
BABAI, Ukraine — A trip up Flower Street on Tuesday afternoon: The yellow house was on fire, the brown house had shattered glass in its driveway, and at the brick house, an electrician working outside had bled to death on the doorstep.
For 46 days, this affluent neighborhood in Babai, a small town outside the northeastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, had avoided the shellings so common on its periphery since the Russian invasion began. Most residents there had seemed unperturbed over the last several days, listening as the thuds and crumps got closer.
But around 1:30 p.m. on Tuesday, their luck ran out. A Russian cluster munition dispensed its explosives up and down Flower Street, leaving a trail of craters, punctured roofs, and casualties. One shredded the side of an aging tan sedan. Another peeled back a fence.
The explosive that killed the electrician appeared to have hit him as he was working on a street-side power pylon outside No. 12.
Two other people in the neighborhood were wounded during the attack, as was one woman’s dog, Glasha.
“Those who were on the street got hurt,” said Elena, 56, Glasha’s owner, who has lived on Flower Street for at least 22 years and declined to provide her last name. “Those who inside came out in one piece.”
As Moscow shifts its war aims to the Donbas region, a swath of territory the size of New Hampshire in Ukraine’s east, its forces have continued to unrelentingly shell Kharkiv, once Ukraine’s second-largest city, despite any hopes of ever seizing the sprawling urban center.
Roughly 1,800 civilians across Ukraine have been killed and 2,490 have been injured since the start of Russia’s invasion, according to United Nations data.
