Austin Arrives in Kyiv in Support of Ukraine’s War Effort

The trip by the U.S. defense secretary comes as Russian forces steadily gain territory in eastern Ukraine.

Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III made an unannounced visit to Kyiv on Monday to bolster support for the war effort as Ukrainian forces steadily lose ground to Russian troops and allies stop short of fully endorsing Ukraine’s latest plan to end the conflict.

The visit by Mr. Austin, his third to Ukraine since Russia’s full-scale invasion began in February 2022, comes three days after President Biden met with allied leaders in Germany to rally support for Ukraine, and with the fate of future American military aid to the country hanging in the balance of the U.S. presidential election in two weeks.

Mr. Austin, who arrived by train from Poland, is set to meet with President Volodymyr Zelensky and top Ukrainian military leaders to discuss how to continue backing Ukraine’s military campaign against a growing set of challenges.

In recent days, Russian troops have clawed back much of the territory Ukraine seized in Russia’s western Kursk region. The Russians are also making slow, grinding progress in the Donbas region in Ukraine’s east despite staggering casualties. And Moscow has sharply increased its drone attacks across Ukraine.

“We’re going to continue to support Ukraine and its efforts to defend its sovereign territory,” Mr. Austin told reporters traveling with him to Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital. The United States has provided Ukraine more than $61 billion in security aid since the start of the war.

Mr. Austin also said U.S. officials would help Ukraine train and equip new units it is building. Reports have surfaced that many Ukrainian units fighting in southern Donetsk and other front-line areas are undermanned.

“They’re working hard to bring more people on board,” Mr. Austin told reporters. “They’ve got to train those people. They have to regenerate combat power.”

Away from the battlefield, Ukraine is also facing headwinds.

Mr. Zelensky told E.U. leaders last week in Brussels that his country desperately needed their support for his plan to end the war, which he maintains could happen no later than next year.

A major point in Mr. Zelensky’s so-called victory plan is for Ukraine’s accession into the NATO military alliance — a proposal that American officials have balked at, fearing it could drag the United States directly into the war.

Mr. Zelensky’s strategy also calls for the West to lift restrictions on Kyiv’s use of missiles provided by the West to strike ammunition depots and other military facilities deep inside Russia, and to share more satellite data that Ukraine can use to identify and strike Russian targets.

The Biden administration has repeatedly rejected such moves. Mr. Biden has been wary about provoking retaliation against U.S. interests. American intelligence agencies have concluded Russia is likely to retaliate with greater force if the United States and its allies permit Ukraine to fire long-range missiles into Russia. And Mr. Austin has said Ukraine already produces its own formidable attack drones in large numbers that can strike targets much deeper inside Russia than the Western missiles.

Much of Mr. Austin’s day in Ukraine’s capital was expected to be filled with meetings to discuss battlefield updates and strategy for the coming months, including Ukraine’s desperate need for more air defenses to ward off Russian missile and glide-bomb attacks aimed at destroying the country’s electrical grid as winter approaches.

In addition, Russia has significantly increased drone strikes against Ukrainian targets across the country. Attacks have increased from 350 strikes in July, to 750 in August, to 1,500 in September, according to two Western officials.

Ukraine’s offensive into Kursk in August caught American officials — as well as Russian commanders — by surprise. Besides bolstering troop and public morale, the incursion had two primary objectives: to force the Kremlin to divert soldiers from other parts of the front to respond to the attack, thereby easing pressure on Ukrainian forces, and to capture territory that Moscow will seek to reclaim, potentially forcing it to come to the negotiating table.

While the first goal appears to have failed so far — with the Kremlin mainly deploying reserves from within Russia while intensifying assaults in eastern Ukraine — officials in Kyiv have clung to the second goal as part of their plan to push Russia into peace negotiations. So far, that has not worked, either.

Ukraine still holds roughly 300 square miles of territory in Kursk — down from a peak of about 400 square miles — but Russian forces, after a slow and disjointed start, are intensifying air and ground attacks. The offensive has also stretched Ukraine’s human and matériel resources, which are sorely needed elsewhere on the eastern and southern fronts to fend off Russian attacks that continue unabated.

Moscow seems undeterred by its astounding troop losses to achieve such marginal gains, American and other Western analysts say.

September was the bloodiest month of the war for Russian forces in Ukraine, U.S. officials said, with the costly offensive in the east bringing the number of Russia’s dead and wounded to more than 600,000 troops since the war started.

U.S. officials attribute the high number of Russian casualties to what they describe as a grinding war of attrition, with each side trying to exhaust the other by inflicting maximum losses, hoping to break the enemy’s capacity and will to continue

It is a style of warfare that Russians have likened to being put into a meat grinder, with commanding officers seemingly willing to send many thousands of infantry soldiers to die.

According to U.S. assessments, Russian casualties in the war so far number as many as 615,000 — 115,000 Russians killed and 500,000 wounded. U.S. and British military analysts put Russian casualties in September at an average of more than 1,200 a day, slightly surpassing the previous highest daily rate of the war that was set in May.

Ukrainian officials have zealously guarded their casualty figures, even from the Americans, but a U.S. official estimated that Ukraine had suffered a bit more than half of Russia’s casualties, or more than 57,500 killed and 250,000 wounded.

These losses are taking a toll inside Ukraine in a war that has now lasted for more than two and a half years, with no clear end in sight

“The general population of Ukraine is tiring of the fight, and accumulating personnel casualties are creating unrest,” said David A. Deptula, a retired U.S. Air Force general and the dean of the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies in Washington, who visited Ukraine this past week. “However, the Ukrainians can prevail with an appropriate level of support and the right operational level plan.”

That level of American support will most likely hinge on who wins the White House in November.

Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee for the White House, has reaffirmed her support for Ukraine, most recently after a meeting with Mr. Zelensky in Washington last month.

Former President Donald J. Trump has meanwhile delivered a series of speeches deriding Mr. Zelensky, misstating facts about the war, echoing Kremlin talking points and saying Ukraine was already basically lost.

Mr. Austin expressed confidence that no matter who wins the election, congressional Democrats and Republicans will approve continued security aid to Ukraine.

“I’ve seen bipartisan support for Ukraine over the last two and a half years, and I fully expected we’ll continue to see that good, bipartisan support from Congress,” he told reporters.