World News | U.S. General Says More Forces May Be Needed

Washington, Mar 29 (AP) The U.S. will likely need to add more permanent or rotational forces in Europe in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the U.S. European Command leader told Congress Tuesday, without detailing when or how many.

Gen. Tod Wolters, who also serves as NATO's supreme allied commander, said decisions will be based on what European nations do, particularly in response to the need to build four additional NATO battlegroups, which are being set up in Hungary, Slovakia, Romania and Bulgaria.

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The groups are an effort to protect and reassure nations on Europe's eastern flank.

“My suspicion is we're going to still need more,” Wolters told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

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Questioned about early U.S. intelligence that suggested Russia would overwhelm Ukraine quickly, Wolters said that there may have been an “intel gap.”

He said broader reviews of the U.S. response to the war will consider that element.

On Russia's use of hypersonic weapons in Ukraine, Wolters said there have been “multiple” launches that appeared to be an attempt by Putin to demonstrate his military's capabilities..

“I don't think they were successful,” he said.

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Moscow: The Kremlin-backed leader of the Russian province of Chechnya has called for storming the Ukrainian capital.

Ramzan Kadyrov's statement came Tuesday as the Russian military announced after a round of talks with Ukrainian negotiators in Istanbul, Turkey that it would scale back its combat operations near the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv and the northern city of Chernihiv.

Speaking to about 10,000 troops in Chechnya's regional capital of Grozny, Kadyrov said that “we need to complete what we have started and shouldn't stop.”

He said if Moscow had allowed his fighters to press the offensive, “I'm more than confident that we would have entered Kyiv and established order there.”

Kadyrov has posted numerous videos on a messaging app allegedly featuring himself and Chechen fighters on the outskirts of Kyiv and in the besieged Sea of Azov port of Mariupol. Those videos couldn't be independently verified.

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Istanbul: The head of the Russian delegation in talks with Ukraine says that Moscow sees the latest meeting as a step toward compromise.

Vladimir Medinskiy said on Russian RT television that Russia sees Ukrainian proposals made Tuesday during the talks in Istanbul as a “step to meet us halfway, a clearly positive fact.”

He added that the two parties have a long way to go to reach an agreement.

Medinsky said that Russia made “two big steps toward peace” during the talks, first by agreeing to reduce military activities around the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv and the northern city of Chernihiv.

He said Russia agreed to a prospective meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy once a prospective peace treaty is ready for signing.

The Ukrainian delegation earlier Tuesday said it had laid out a possible framework for a future peace deal based on legally binding security guarantees that would provide for other countries to intervene if Ukraine is attacked. (AP)

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)