The coming year will be “decisive” in the war against Russia, a top adviser to President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Monday, calling for more sanctions and additional weapons systems to help strengthen his country’s air defenses before another expected Russian assault on civilian energy infrastructure with the approach of winter.
“A turning point in the war is approaching,” Andriy Yermak, head of the office of the president of Ukraine, said during an event at the Hudson Institute in Washington on Monday evening. “The next year will be decisive.”
Yermak said Kyiv’s counteroffensive was progressing, that Ukrainian armed forces had a foothold on the left, or eastern, bank of the Dnipro river and that Zelenskiy knows how to achieve victory.
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His view of the war, which comes as US lawmakers debate a new funding request for both the Ukraine and Israel conflicts, is much more optimistic than that expressed by Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, Ukraine’s commander-in-chief, who recently told the Economist that it was a “stalemate.”
Yermak said he met with national security advisers from the US, Germany, UK and France while in Washington to rally support.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken was among the American officials who Yermak met with. In a statement on Monday, the State Department said Blinken “underscored ongoing US work together with our global coalition of more than 50 allies and partners to provide Ukraine the support it needs.”
Yermak’s visit comes as the next tranche of US assistance has been held up in Congress amid opposition among some Republicans to continued support. Yermak said he will meet with Capitol Hill lawmakers on Tuesday.
(Updates with Blinken, in penultimate paragraph.)
