VLAD WHO?:

Early in the war Washington worried that aggressively equipping Ukraine's army with anything but "defensive" weaponry risked embroiling the US and NATO in a direct conflict with Russia.

Now, the Pentagon has shed those earlier inhibitions and is shipping offensive weapons like heavy artillery, helicopters and attack drones.

Rather than hiding it, the Pentagon also began openly talking this week about how it is training Ukrainian troops, including inside Germany, to use the weapons they are receiving.

And instead of saying, as it did in February, that it wants only to help Ukraine survive, Washington now says its goal in the war is to debilitate Russia for the long term.

"We want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can't do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine," US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said after a visit to Kyiv last week.

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