A day after Russian President Vladimir Putin threatened to attack new targets if Western nations supplied Ukraine with long-range missile systems, Britain announced Monday that it would join the United States in providing the advanced weapons to help Ukraine hold off Russia's assault in the east.
"As Russia's tactics change, so must our support to Ukraine," Defense Secretary Ben Wallace said in announcing that Britain would supply rocket systems that can hit targets up to 50 miles away.
President Joe Biden said last week that the United States would soon deliver a precision rocket system with a similar range, far beyond what Ukraine currently has in its arsenal, as the fighting in eastern Ukraine increasingly becomes an artillery war.
But there is a complication: Sophisticated weaponry is increasingly arriving in Ukraine from Western allies, but Ukrainian soldiers do not always know how to use it. Some have been forced to resort to Google.
Russia's artillery advantage has been on display in the seesaw battle for Sievierodonetsk, a city that is key to controlling the entire eastern region of Donbas.
Russian forces had seized a large part of the city last week after weeks of intense bombardment, but Ukrainian forces have clawed back ground in recent days in pitched street battles. On Monday, the Russians ramped up artillery attacks and erased some of the Ukrainians' gains, Serhiy Haidai, the regional governor, said in an interview on television.
As Russia presses its campaign to seize all of Donbas, the longer-range, precision Western rockets could dent Moscow's advantage.
Russia's foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, questioned whether the Ukrainian government could restrain itself as promised from using the weapons to strike targets inside Russia. The longer the range of weapons provided to Ukraine, he said at a news conference Monday, the farther back Russia will push Ukraine's army.
'SIGNIFICANT' SUPPORT
The United States and its allies will keep providing "significant" support to Ukraine out of respect for the legacy of D-Day soldiers, whose victory over the Nazis helped lead to a new world order and a "better peace," Army Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Monday.
In an interview with The Associated Press while overlooking Omaha Beach in Normandy, Milley said the war on Ukraine undermines the rules established by Allied countries after the end of World War II. He spoke on the 78th anniversary of the D-Day invasion of Allied troops onto the beaches of France, which led to the overthrow of Nazi Germany's occupation.
One fundamental rule of the"global rules-based order" is that "countries cannot attack other countries with their military forces in acts of aggression unless it's an act of pure self-defense," he stressed. "But that's not what's happened here in Ukraine. What's happened here is an open, unambiguous act of aggression."
"It is widely considered to undermine the rules that these dead -- here at Omaha Beach and at the cemetery at Colleville-sur-Mer -- have died for. They died for something. They died for that order to be put in place so that we would have a better peace," Milley said, speaking at the American Cemetery overlooking the shore in the northwestern French village at Colleville-sur-Mer.
That's why "the nations of Europe, the nations of NATO, are supporting Ukraine with lethal and nonlethal support in order to make sure that that rule set is underwritten and supported," Milley explained.
Dozens of veterans -- now all in their 90s, from the U.S., Britain, Canada and elsewhere -- were taking part in poignant D-Day ceremonies Monday.
On June 6, 1944, Allied troops landed on French beaches code-named Omaha, Utah, Juno, Sword and Gold, carried by 7,000 boats. On that single day, 4,414 Allied soldiers lost their lives, 2,501 of them Americans. More than 5,000 were wounded. On the German side, several thousand were killed or wounded. The invasion helped lead to Hitler's defeat and the end of World War II.
Asked about whether Ukraine gets enough support, Milley noted "there's a very, very significant battle going on in the Donbas," in reference to Ukraine's heavily contested eastern industrial region bordering Russia. "But Kyiv [the capital] was protected and successfully defended against. The Russians had to shift their forces to the south in the Donbas. And we'll see how this plays out."
"I think that the United States and the allied countries are providing a significant amount of support to Ukraine, and that will continue," he said. He didn't elaborate.
Milley also had strong words about Ukraine at the ceremony at the American Cemetery, attended by more than 20 World War II veterans and several thousand spectators.
"Kyiv may be 2,000 kilometers away from here, [but] they too, right now, today, are experiencing the same horrors as the French citizens experienced in World War II at the hands of the Nazi invader," Milley said in his speech. "Let's not those only here be the last witnesses to a time when our Allies come together to defeat tyranny."
Milley's parents served during World War II and his uncle was in the Navy off Normandy's coast on D-Day as part of Operation Overlord.
That generation of soldiers "fought and sacrificed for all of us ... and I have a very, very special bond with them. And I'm very respectful of what they've done. And I think we all -- all of us today -- need to carry on the legacy that they fought and died for," Milley said.
BODIES RELEASED
Russia has begun turning over the bodies of Ukrainian fighters killed at the Azovstal steelworks, the fortress-like plant in the destroyed city of Mariupol where their last-ditch stand became a symbol of resistance against Moscow's invasion.
Dozens of the dead taken from the bombed-out mill's now Russian-occupied ruins have been transferred to Kyiv, where DNA testing is underway to identify the remains, according to a military leader and a spokeswoman for the Azov Regiment.
The Azov Regiment was among the Ukrainian units that defended the steelworks for nearly three months before surrendering in May under relentless Russian attacks from the ground, sea and air.
It was unclear how many bodies might remain at the plant.
The Ukrainian fighters' dogged defense of the steel mill frustrated the Kremlin's objective of quickly capturing Mariupol and tied down Russian forces in the strategic port city.
The defenders' fate in Russian hands is shrouded in uncertainty. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said more than than 2,500 fighters from the plant are being held prisoner, and Ukraine is working to win their release.
The recovery of their remains from the Azovstal ruins has not been announced by the Ukrainian government, and Russian officials have not commented. But relatives of soldiers killed at the plant discussed the process with The Associated Press.
Ukraine on Saturday announced the first officially confirmed swap of its military dead since the war began. It said the two sides exchanged 320 bodies in all, each getting back 160 sets of remains. The swap took place Thursday on the front line in the Zaporizhzhia region.
Anna Holovko, a spokeswoman for the Azov Regiment, said all 160 of the Ukrainian bodies turned over by the Russians were from the Azovstal ruins. She said that at least 52 of those bodies are thought to be the remains of Azov Regiment soldiers.
Maksym Zhorin, a former Azov Regiment leader now co-commanding a Kyiv-based military unit, confirmed that bodies from the steel plant were among those exchanged.
BATTLE FOR KEY CITY
Meanwhile, Russian forces continued to fight for control of Sievierodonetsk, an eastern Ukrainian city that is key to Moscow's goal of completing the capture of the industrial Donbas region.
Zelenskyy said Ukrainian forces were holding their positions in the city amid fierce fighting in the streets as Russia tries to deploy more forces.
"But it is the 103rd day, and the Ukrainian Donbas stands. It stands firmly," he said in his nightly address to the nation.
Zelenskyy also said Moscow's forces intend to take the southeastern city of Zaporizhzhia, home to more than 700,000 people, a move that could severely weaken Ukraine's standing and allow the Russian military to advance closer to the center of the country.
"In the Zaporizhzhia region ... there is the most threatening situation there," Zelenskyy said.
On the battlefield, Russian warplanes fired long-range missiles to destroy a plant on the edge of the town of Lozova in the northeastern Kharkiv region that was repairing armored vehicles, Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said.
Russian aircraft hit 73 areas of concentration of Ukrainian troops and equipment, while Russian artillery struck 431 military targets, Konashenkov said. His claims could not be independently verified.
Ukrainian forces put up resistance in Sievierodonetsk and other areas.
"There are more of them, they are more powerful, but we have every chance to fight on this direction," Zelenskyy said.
Ukrainian artillery fire could be heard outside the city of Bakhmut, southwest of Sievierodonetsk.
Ukrainian tanks moved back and forth from the front line, carefully hiding under trees after firing at Russian positions. One of the tanks was a T-80 captured from Russian forces. Its crew hacked bushes with hatchets and covered the vehicle and its main gun with branches.
The president of Ukraine's separatist Donetsk People's Republic said the pro-Moscow region is putting on trial three British men alleged to have been mercenaries for Ukraine. If convicted on the charges, including of trying to seize power, the men could get the death penalty.
Putin signed a decree granting lump-sum payments of $81,000 to families of Russian National Guard members who die in Ukraine. Guard members have taken part in such operations as the seizure of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. The lump sum is roughly six times the average annual Russian salary.
SECRET TRIP
Zelenskyy met soldiers and handed out military awards near the front line in the eastern part of the country, in a visit highlighting his role as a wartime leader and aimed at boosting morale.
Sunday's trip was shrouded in secrecy beforehand and announced in statements issued late that day and early Monday. He traveled to the front-line city of Lysychansk.
Officials offered few details of how Zelenskyy reached the city, which has been bombarded by artillery and is at risk of being surrounded by Russian forces in one of the hottest areas of the front. The Ukrainian supply lines into the area, along roads that run through plains and are exposed to nearby Russian troops, are often attacked.
"I am proud of everyone with whom I met, whom I shook hands with," Zelenskyy said in a video address describing his visit.
He also offered a statement of support, saying: "We brought something to the military. I will not talk about it in detail."
It was unclear whether the comment referred to deliveries to the front of newly arrived Western weaponry, which soldiers have said are sorely needed to even the fight against better-armed Russian forces.
The visit was only the second official trip that Zelenskyy has made since the war began.
In addition to visiting Lysychansk, as part of the same trip, Zelenskyy met in the Zaporizhzhia region with civilians who fled the city of Mariupol, which is now under Russian occupation.
"I understood their difficult questions," he said of the displaced families, some of the more than 12 million Ukrainians whom the war has uprooted in a vast migration westward, away from the heaviest fighting.
"Each family has its own story," he went on. "Most were without men. Someone's husband went to war; someone's is in captivity; someone's, unfortunately, died. A tragedy."
He added that he delivered a message to the families: "We must live for the children."
Information for this article was contributed by Marc Santora, Ivan Nechepurenko and Andrew E. Kramer of The New York Times and by Sylvie Corbet, Jeffrey Schaeffer, John Leicester, Hanna Arhirova, David Keyton, Oleksandr Stashevskyi, Yuras Karmanau and Andrea Rosa of The Associated Press.