White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki talks to reporters during the daily news conference on April 8 in Washington, DC. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Russia’s appointment of new military leadership, “shows that there’s going to be a continuation of what we’ve already seen on the ground in Ukraine.”
“And that’s what we’re expecting,” Psaki said to Dana Perino in an interview on Fox News Sunday.
CNN reported on Saturday that Russian President Vladimir Putin has appointed a new general to direct the war in Ukraine as his military shifts plans after a failure to take Kyiv, according to a US official and a European official.
The officials told CNN that Army General Alexander Dvornikov, the commander of Russia’s Southern Military District, has been named as theater commander of Russia’s military campaign in Ukraine, following a series of battlefield setbacks and an apparent lack of coordination among groups of Russian forces operating in Ukraine.
Psaki called Dvornikov responsible for the “atrocities we saw in Syria and said that for Ukraine, the US continues with officials to work to make sure they have the weaponry and assistance they need to be successful on the battlefield.
“Just this week, our national security adviser, our secretary and our chairman of the Joint Chiefs had a two-hour call with their counterparts to go through item by item exactly what the Ukrainians were requesting, what they wanted, if we can’t meet what they need. We’re working with our allies and partners as we did with the S-300,” Psaki said, referencing that Slovakia transferred to Ukraine this week and the US intends to place an American Patriot missile system in Slovakia in return.
Psaki also said the administration found the admission from the Kremlin that their forces had suffered great losses, “interesting,” for a country that is slow to admit defeat.
“It was significant,” she said, calling it a reflection of “the courage of the Ukrainian leaders.”
CORRECTION: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated which country sent the S-300 missile defense system to Ukraine.