Biden to talk with Western allies to discuss Ukraine

President Joe Biden will hold a call with Western allies on Tuesday morning to discuss the situation in the Ukraine as Russia announced a new offensive in its war and the U.S. barred anti-satellite missile testing.  

Leaders from the United Kingdom, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Romania, Japan, NATO and the European Commission are also due to join the call that Biden will host from the Situation Room in the White House.

They will discuss how to step up military assistance for Ukraine and how to increase economic pressure on Moscow. 

The call comes as Russia escalated its missle and artillery strikes as part of its new phase of assault aimed at capturing all of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions in the eastern Ukraine. 

‘Another phase of this operation is starting now,’ Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said.

Russia has stepped up its bombardment of Ukraine as it enters a new phase of war – above smoke rising from the Azovstal steel plant during airstrikes in Mariupol, eastern Ukraine

Ukrainian servicemen sit atop an armoured fighting vehicle as Russia’s attack on Ukraine continues, at an unknown location in Eastern Ukraine

The Pentagon estimated that Moscow sent 11 more battalion tactical groups into Ukraine, additional forces likely to comprise 8,000 to 11,000 soldiers.

‘A very large part of the entire Russian army is now focused on this offensive,’ Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a speech over Monday night. ‘No matter how many Russian soldiers are driven there, we will fight.’ 

British officials are already warning this new phase could last ‘several months.’ 

‘The next phase of the war was likely to be an attritional conflict which could last several months. Russia would aim to exploit its troop number advantage but Ukraine had already shown that this was unlikely to be decisive on its own,’ a British national security official told reporters in the UK.

‘There were some signs that Russia had not learned lessons from previous setbacks in northern Ukraine, and there was evidence of troops being committed to the fight in a piecemeal fashion.’

Meanwhile, the U.S. government will no longer conduct anti-satellite missile tests, making it the first nation to enact such a ban, Vice President Kamala Harris announced Monday.  

The Biden administration is setting the self-imposed ban as part of a goal to make it an ‘international norm for responsible behavior in space,’ Harris said.

The new declaration comes after Russia in November conducted an anti-satellite missile test to destroy its Cosmos-1408 satellite, a soviet-era spacecraft that’s been in orbit since the 1980s. 

The explosion generated a cloud of at least 1,500 pieces of trackable debris that threatened the International Space Station. China conducted a similar test in 2007, as did India in 2019. Such tests are highly controversial due to the dangerous debris they can cause – debris from an anti-satellite missile test can travel at thousands of miles and even a small fragment can damage surrounding space stations. 

Harris, who chairs the National Space Council, made the announcement during a speech at the Vandenberg Space Force Base. While at the base, the vice president received a briefing on the Space Force and the U.S. Space Command. 

The Biden administration has continued two Trump-era space initiatives – the creation of the Space Force as the sixth branch of the military and the Artemis program, NASA’s effort to return astronauts to the moon.  

‘The destruction of space objects through direct-ascent ASAT missile testing is reckless and irresponsible,’ the vice president’s office stated in a release. ‘The long-lived debris created by these tests now threaten satellites and other space objects that are vital to all nations’ security, economic, and scientific interests, and increases risk to astronauts in space. Overall, these tests jeopardize the long-term sustainability of outer space and imperil the exploration and use of space by all nations.’ 

Russia unleashed a barrage of artillery fire on eastern Ukraine overnight as its offensive in the east got underway, with troops seizing the village of Kreminna. But Ukraine has also launched counter-attacks east of Kharkiv and near Izyum to cut Russian supply lines

The U.S. government will no longer conduct anti-satellite missile tests, making it the first nation to enact such a ban, Vice President Harris announced Monday

Harris visits  the Command Space Operation Center at the Vandenberg Space Force Base in Lompoc, California, on Monday, April 18

The above photo shows India’s anti-satellite missile test conducted in March 2019 

No country has yet used anti-satellite missile technology to take out another nation’s spacecraft, but four nations have demonstrated the technology on their own satellites.  

As Russia kicks off its new phase of the war, Moscow claimed it has hit more than 1,200 Ukrainian targets with missiles, airstrikes and artillery.

Overall, Russia claimed it had struck 1,260 Ukrainian military assets in the overnight bombardment and a Ukrainian MiG-29 fighter jet had been shot down near Malinovka, Donetsk Region. 

Zelensky adviser Oleksiy Arestovych said Russian forces were trying to find ‘sensitive spots’ in Ukraine’s defences but added: ‘Their offensive will fail – I give you a 99% guarantee – they simply do not have enough strength.’

‘The battle for Donbas, which was announced and apparently began yesterday, is under way and is going very cautiously. The battle will not go in Russia’s favour,’ he said on national television.