American 155-mm M777 howitzers, supplied to Ukraine as part of US military aid, have a major impact on the battlefield. This was stated during a briefing by a senior Pentagon official.
"You can already see that the Ukrainians are ready to launch a counteroffensive in Donbas. They are returning some of the cities that the Russians captured earlier. And Kharkiv is a great example that they are doing more than just defending the city. Now they are displacing the Russians to the east and north, and we believe that this is influenced by howitzers, especially in Kharkiv," said a US Department of Defense official.
At the same time, he noted that the M777 is not the only weapon that allows the Armed Forces to conduct an effective counteroffensive.
The Pentagon said that yesterday the US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin had a conversation with the Minister of Defense of Ukraine Oleksii Reznikov. Reznikov told Austin that 74 of the 90 M777 howitzers provided to Ukraine by the United States are currently in combat, providing long-range fire from closed positions. They are used not only in the Kharkiv region, but also in other places of the Donbas.
Jack Detsch, a correspondent for the American publication Foreign Policy, said on his Twitter page that three Soviet Mi-17 helicopters had arrived in Ukraine from the United States to carry out combat missions, and that allies had sent 10 more aircrafts.
