Lloyd Austin
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U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said on Monday that the U.S. would like to see Russia's military "weakened to a degree."

The big picture: Austin and Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv on Sunday.
  • Austin and Blinken promised Zelensky over $300 million in foreign military financing and noted that the U.S. had approved a $165 million sale of ammunition.
  • They also said that U.S. diplomats will return to Ukraine this week.
What they're saying: "We want to see Russia weakened to a degree that it can't do the kinds of things it has done in invading Ukraine," Austin told reporters in Poland.
  • "It has already lost a lot of military capability and a lot of its troops, quite frankly," Austin added. "And we want to see them not have the capability to very quickly reproduce that capability."