Ukraine's military intelligence chief said his country's borders must return to what they became upon independence from the Soviet Union, and vowed that the fight against Russian President Vladimir Putin's troops will continue until then.
Maj. Gen. Kyrylo Budanov told The Wall Street Journal that Ukraine will fight until Russian forces are expelled from all of its territory — including Crimea and other areas seized by Moscow in 2014.
"I don't know any borders except the borders of 1991," Budanov told the WSJ. "Who can force Ukraine to freeze the conflict? This is a war of all Ukrainians, and if someone in the world thinks that they can dictate to Ukraine the conditions under which it can or cannot defend itself, then they are seriously mistaken."
Budanov also told the WSJ that Ukraine needed medium- and long-range missile systems, large-caliber artillery and strike aircraft from Western countries to offset Russian manpower and equipment.
"We have already begun an offensive in certain points, but a large-scale offensive without these weapons will be very difficult," Budanov said.
The Senate on Thursday overwhelmingly approved a $40 billion infusion of military and economic aid for Ukraine and its allies as both major parties rallied behind America's latest, and quite possibly not last, financial salvo against Russia's invasion.
Although the U.S. has delivered about 90 M777 howitzers to Ukraine with another 18 on the way, the Biden administration has been reluctant to approve Ukrainian requests for other, longer-range, weapons.
Administration officials worry that doing so could prompt an escalation by Moscow.
"We are waging a war on our own territory. If someone thinks we must have restrictions on using some types of weapons, I would like to remind them that Russia here uses absolutely all the types of weapons in its possession, from cruise missiles launched by submarines to strategic bombers," Budanov told WSJ.
"The entire spectrum of Russian arms has been employed here, except nuclear weapons, so far."
Ukrainian forces have been pushing back Russian troops in the northeastern region of Kharkiv and reclaimed a string of villages.
Budanov told the WSJ that the Ukrainian military would shift its focus to driving Russia from areas it has occupied in the country's south as well as the eastern Donbas region, where Russia has made slow but steady gains in recent days.
"Somewhere they will succeed and somewhere they will fail," Budanov told WSJ, "but it doesn't matter at all because Russia will lose in the end and Ukraine will recover all its temporarily lost territories. It will do so by force, exclusively by force, because no other way exists."
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