Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin projected a sense of urgency on Wednesday after a virtual meeting of the multinational Ukraine Defense Contact Group. “The Russians clearly are wanting to press forward to the boundaries of Donetsk all of the way to the west, and to do that they need to get hold of Bakhmut and the road network that goes past it,” said Dara Massicot, senior policy researcher at the RAND Institute. “Russia remains isolated, their military stocks are rapidly depleting, the soldiers are demoralized, untrained unmotivated conscripts in convicts and their leadership is failing them,” Milley said