Washington: Ukraine can win the war against Russia

US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said that Ukraine could win the war against Russia if it had the "appropriate equipment", following a visit to Kyiv accompanied by Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, as the Russian military continued its strikes targeting rail installations in the central west of the country.

"The first step to victory is the confidence that we can win," Austin told a group of reporters after he and Blinken met Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

"We see that they can win, they can win if they have the right equipment," he added.

Austin went on to say that the United States hopes to exhaust the Russian military in Ukraine, to prevent it from carrying out further invasions in the future.

"We want to see Russia so weak that it can't do the things it did like invading Ukraine, it lost a lot of military capabilities, a lot of soldiers, and we don't want it to be able to quickly rebuild its capabilities," he added.

Follow our latest local and sports news and the latest political and economic developments via Google news