high admiration for the way that the ukrainian armed forces are deploying these capabilities. ukraine clearly believes that it can win. and so does everyone here. reporter: much stronger rhetoric we re hearing not only from austin but from the american administration. and that comes on top of the shift we ve seen over the course the last few weeks where not only the u.s. and the uk but others have been more willing to send in bigger more powerful weapons such as the howitzers, artillery critical for ukraine for the fight in the donbas region. so that is part of what this conference focuses on. it will be broken down into three parts. one, a battlefield situation update, ukrainian defense minister is here and he will provide that. and then one session in the short and immemedium term, and in the long term.
we don t have any time to waste. the briefings today laid out clearly why the coming weeks will be so crucial for ukraine. so, we ve got to move at the speed of war. and i know that all the leaders leave today more resolved than ever to support ukraine in its fight against russian aggression and atrocities. reporter: ukrainian minister of defense was here. he started this off with a battlefield situation update, and that was to inform the conversations about what weapons it is that ukraine needs, and then that was broken into two separate questions, the short and the long-term, what s needed to keep ukraine in the fight and allow them to succeed, and then what s needed in the long-term for ukraine to defend its own sovereignty as this conflict drags on and perhaps even after there is some sort of end to this conflict and then at the end, defense secretary lloyd austin announced this would essentially be a monthly discussion and that s a key