U.S. says Russia’s Ukraine invasion offered preview to potential global tyranny

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has offered a preview of “a possible world of tyranny and turmoil,” U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said on Saturday in a speech to a security forum in Canada.
Austin’s remarks were some of his strongest to date on the importance to the international community of helping Kyiv prevail after nearly nine months of war, and they were delivered at what may be an inflection point in the conflict.
After a series of battlefield defeats, Russia is aiming punishing missile strikes at Ukraine’s energy infrastructure that could leave millions of civilians exposed to the winter cold. Moscow hopes to exhaust Ukraine’s missile defenses, and buy time to reset its forces, Pentagon officials say.
Austin said Russia was breaking the laws of war.
“These aren’t just lapses. These aren’t exceptions to the rule. These are atrocities,” Austin said.
“Russian missile barrages have left innocent Ukrainians without heat, water, and electricity. We’ve seen schools attacked. Children killed. Hospitals bombed. Centers of Ukrainian history and culture reduced to rubble.”
Moscow denies that its armed forces deliberately target civilians or civilian infrastructure.