As President Joe Biden prepared to head to Brussels and Warsaw, Poland, amid a breakdown in the latest Ukraine-Russia war peace talks, the Defense Department was unsure of what Vladimir Putin's "endgame is now."
"We are not exactly clear what their endgame is now," Pentagon spokesman John Kirby told Tuesday's Fox News' "Fox & Friends." "It's just that we know that the endgame they started with 27 days ago, they have been frustrated that they have not been able to achieve.
"We know they're frustrated by their lack of progress."
Kirby added in a CNN interview Tuesday that Russian forces "only have two population centers that they have actually taken."
"They have not been able to take any others," he added to CNN. "They are slowed."
Now, Kirby surmises, Russia's plan is "indiscriminate air bombardment" as "a prelude of even more violent attacks."
While Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has armed and made calls for civilian militias to fight the Russian invasion, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said last week, the Washington Examiner reported, Putin's attacks in Ukraine "we've seen most recently appear to be focused directly on civilians."
Biden has called Putin a "war criminal" and warned allegations of biological weapons labs in Ukraine is a pretext for a dangerous Russian attack.
"Now he's talking about new false flags he's setting up, including asserting that we in America have biological as well as chemical weapons in Europe — simply not true," Biden said. "They are also suggesting that Ukraine has biological and chemical weapons in Ukraine. That's a clear sign he's considering using both of those."
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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