China is expanding its nuclear forces at a “breathtaking” pace, the commander of the U.S. Strategic Command warned in urging for strengthened U.S. nuclear deterrence against the danger.

Adm. Charles Richard, meeting with reporters at the command’s annual conference on deterrence Thursday, said it was still unclear how far and how fast China is preparing to go with its nuclear arsenal, but that the challenge posed by Beijing was real and growing.

“The threat posed to this nation, our allies from China is expanding at a breathtaking pace,” the admiral said. “We don’t know where that’s going to wind up.”

In May, Adm. Richard told the Senate Armed Services Committee that two years ago, “a great debate” was held on whether China would double its nuclear warheads by 2029. That doubling already has taken place, he told lawmakers, and further expansion is continuing.

The addition of 360 ICBM silos in western China is the “biggest and most visible” element of the buildup, along with the doubling of the number of road-mobile DF-31 missiles, he said. The People’s Liberation Army also has deployed a “true air leg” of its strategic forces with H-6N nuclear bombers armed with air-launched ballistic missiles.

Also, the Jin-class nuclear missile submarine force can launch attacks from protected “bastions” in the South China Sea and more missile submarines are being built.

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As the PLA builds a nuclear warning system, Chinese strategy is shifting from retaliatory strikes to “launch-on-warning,” Adm. Richard said. The readiness of Chinese nuclear forces also has been increased, and shorter-range nuclear missiles also have been deployed. Those missiles would not be needed “in a true minimum-deterrent, no-first-use policy” that China claims it has been pursuing, he said.

The test last year of a new polar-orbiting hypersonic missile provides Chinese nuclear forces with an unlimited range strike weapon that can launch nuclear attacks “from any azimuth… with great performance,” he said. “No nation in history has ever demonstrated that capability.”

Russia also is “in a similar category” as a nuclear threat to the U.S., “and then there’s North Korea, potentially others,” the four-star admiral said.

The shift from the decades-long U.S.-Russia bilateral standoff to a three- or four-way confrontation with nuclear powers is driving the U.S. modernization of nuclear forces.

U.S. defense officials say the likely weapon system for the new missile silos Beijing is building is the new DF-41 intercontinental ballistic missile, which can carry up to 10 multiple nuclear warheads. Intelligence estimates say China’s nuclear warhead stockpile, estimated to be around 250 warheads, will increase to as many as 1,000 warheads in the next eight years.

Adm. Richard has said the Biden administration’s highly anticipated policy review on nuclear forces, the Nuclear Posture Review, will be released by the Pentagon shortly. Defense sources said the unclassified posture review outlining the administration’s approach to nuclear weapons was to be released earlier this year, but was pulled back following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February and the threats of nuclear attack made by President Vladimir Putin.

Adm. Richard said the Russian leader’s “thinly veiled nuclear saber-rattling” was unprecedented.

“I’m not sure we have ever had rhetoric like that in history,” he said. “I can’t remember an event in the Cold War even where you had that level of rhetoric, and I think it points to the reality of the threat that we face and the necessity for us in our allies, to not only take concrete steps with our deterrence forces, but to think through the theories on how we’re going to accomplish it.”

The U.S. government is also engaged in a major buildup of nuclear forces which have grown obsolete and in need of repair through years of neglect. Between 2021 and 2030, the Pentagon is expected to spend $634 billion on new weapons, missiles, submarines and bombers to modernize deterrent forces.

But the Biden administration has also announced publicly that it wants to reduce the role of nuclear weapons in U.S. security policy, taking up a policy set in motion during the Obama administration. That policy has been criticized by Republicans in Congress who say more needs to be done to strengthen deterrence when nuclear threats from China, Russia and North Korea are on the rise.

Adm. Richard said he “applauds and encourages” administration efforts to pursue arms control talks.

“All parties have got to comply, it has to be verifiable, but anything that limits the threat to us and our allies is a good thing,” Adm. Richard said. “And if done correctly it lowers the threat to everybody, it’s good for everyone that’s involved. That’s the advantage or benefit of joining into that.”

The State Department is leading efforts to hold arms talks, but negotiations with Moscow were cut off after the Ukraine invasion and China has refused to engage in strategic arms talks, despite its signing of the Non-Proliferation Treaty that calls on all signatories to reduce their arsenals through negotiations.

Adm. Richard said the military needs to regularly review the nuclear weapons and capabilities that will be needed for executing the strategy outlined in the nuclear posture review.

“I’m pretty confident that we’re going to go down that path inside the Department of Defense,” he said.

The four-star admiral said reports that Chinese telecommunications gear located near U.S. nuclear bases highlight the threat to command and control systems used for waging nuclear war, but added, “Our nation’s nuclear command and control has never been in a more resilient, reliable [or] robust alignment than it is today,” he said.

The Stratcom chief said that both inside and outside the Pentagon there is “this very flawed idea in my mind, that somehow nuclear sits in its own box off to the side, it has its own threat, you can decide how credible you want that threat to be: ‘Oh they would never do that.’”

“And somehow, there is this completely independent dial sitting over here where we can decide how much risk as a nation we wish to take in this area, and that is somehow disconnected from all the other things we do to defend this nation.”

He argued instead that all the security threats to the U.S., both nuclear and non-nuclear, are linked together and nuclear deterrence is the foundation for “every other thing we do inside the Department of Defense to defend the nation.”

Russia launched a barrage of missiles at Ukraine’s capital from neighboring Belarus early Thursday as Kyiv’s counter-offensive in the crucial city of Kherson appeared to be gathering momentum. At least 20 missiles were fired from Belarus, Moscow’s key ally in its five-month-old invasion of Ukraine, striking an apartment block in the Chernihiv region as well as buildings outside the country’s capital.

The attacks near Kyiv came as Ukrainian forces in the east, bolstered by U.S.- and Western-supplied weaponry, were poised to launch the first major counterattack of the five-month war, aiming to reclaim land taken by Russian forces and their separatist allies around the strategic city of Kherson early in the fighting.

Thursday’s Russian barrage also highlighted the role played by Moscow’s ally Belarus in the fighting. Minsk has backed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion and provided key staging areas and invasion routes, while trying to keep from directly joining the fighting with its neighbor to the south.

Separately, the Kremlin on Thursday confirmed it had gotten an offer from the Biden administration but said no firm agreement has been reached on a prisoner swap that could secure the release of U.S. basketball star Brittney Griner and former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan from Russian detention.

Moscow was responding to a “substantial” proposal from Secretary of State Antony Blinken that would likely spring a high-level Russian prisoner — possibly convicted arms trafficker Viktor Bout — from a U.S. prison in exchange for the Americans.

“Look, since there are no agreements now that would be finalized, then, accordingly, I have nothing more to add to what has been said,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters from multiple outlets on his daily conference call.

Ms. Griner, who played basketball in Russia during the WNBA’s offseason, admitted having vape cartridges with cannabis in her luggage in February but insisted she didn’t intend to violate the law. Mr. Whelan, a corporate security executive from Michigan, was sentenced to 16 years in prison in 2020 after he was convicted on espionage charges. He has repeatedly denied being a spy.

The Biden administration is in a tough spot regarding the potential prisoner swap. While it doesn’t want to encourage hostage-taking by adversaries hoping to influence U.S. policy, the White House is under intense pressure to bring Ms. Griner and Mr. Whelan back home.

Casualties and a counterattack

In Ukraine, officials from Kyiv’s Operational Command North confirmed there had been casualties from the missile attack in Chernihiv, about 90 miles from Kyiv, but the exact figures were still being determined.

“Twenty-five missiles in under an hour. Russia has gone mad this morning, attacking Kyiv and Chernihiv regions. The launchpad is Belarus,” Ukrainian lawmaker Lesia Vasylenko wrote in a Twitter message.

According to The Guardian newspaper, the missile launches came from an airport near Gomel, a city in southeastern Belarus. The attack prompted a fierce condemnation from Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, the exiled opposition leader challenging longtime Belarus’ strongman Alexander Lukashenko.

“Horrified to see how Russia continues to use Belarus to attack Ukraine,” she tweeted. Mr. Lukashenko, she added, “can’t fool anyone. He is guilty of crimes against Belarusians and Ukrainians and must be held accountable.”

Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, also came under a barrage of shelling overnight, its mayor told the Associated Press.

On Thursday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said economic sanctions against Russia were an important element in helping the country in its fight but argued that even tougher steps are needed.

“Even if Russia says everywhere in the media that they do not have problems [over] sanctions, it is not true,” Mr. Zelenskyy told reporters after a meeting with Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda. “Sanctions are a great help from all European countries.”

Ukraine wants even tougher sanctions imposed on Russia, including disconnecting the country’s banking system from the international SWIFT financial clearinghouse, a key pillar of the financial world that banks use to securely send messages to each other.

Having fought off the initial Russian onslaught in the spring and then ceded territory around the breakaway separatist enclaves in Luhansk and Donetsk in the east, Ukraine’s military appears to be mustering its forces for its first major counter-offensive in the disputed Donbas region. The target, analysts say, is Kherson, a major economic center in the southern section of the country.

It would be both a strategic and symbolic breakthrough for the Zelenskyy government, as Kherson was the first large city to fall when Russian forces invaded Ukraine in late February.

Ukrainian presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovich told reporters in Kyiv Thursday that the operation to re-take Kherson was underway, with Kyiv’s forces planning to isolate Russian troops and leave them with three options — “retreat, if possible, surrender or be destroyed.”

But Russia is reportedly moving to reinforce its positions in the city, and a major battle could be brewing. But for once, it is the Ukrainian fighters who have the initiative.

“Their forces have likely established a bridgehead south of the Ingulets River, which forms the northern boundary of Russian-occupied Kherson,” Britain’s Defense Ministry said in one of its latest intelligence assessments of the fighting. “Ukraine has used its new long-range artillery to damage at least three of the bridges across the Dnipro River which Russia relies on to resupply the area under its control.”

Key to the counteroffensive, Ukrainian military officials say, has been the stream of U.S. and Western-supplied missile systems that have allowed Ukraine to target Russian depots and other sensitive sites far from the front lines.

“Russia’s 49th Army is stationed on the west bank of the Dnipro River and now looks highly vulnerable,” British officials said this week in a Twitter message.

Kherson is now essentially cut off from the other occupied territories controlled by Russian forces inside Ukraine. A loss would “severely undermine” Russia’s attempt to paint its occupation as a success, British officials said.

Bradley Bowman, senior director of the Center for Military and Political Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said it would be difficult to overestimate the significance of Russia’s loss if Ukraine was able to retake Kherson.

“It would be a major operational win,” he said Thursday during an interview with the Euronews television network. “It would show that the combination of Ukrainian bravery and sacrifice, when armed with Western weapons — including the American High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) — can be incredibly effective.”

• This article was based in part on wire service reports.

Two new cases, one from America and one from Spain, give scientists new hope for finding a broad-based cure for the virus that causes AIDS.

The 66-year-old California man, now called the “City of Hope” patient for the San Diego facility in which he was treated, was given a stem cell transplant for leukemia.

In addition to being the oldest patient to be cured of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), he is also the patient who had HIV the longest, having contracted it in 1988.

The transplant came from the stem cells of a volunteer with a genetic mutation that makes people resistant to most strains of HIV. This particular strategy was first found to be successful in 2007 with Timothy Ray Brown, the “Berlin patient.”

But the two new cases indicate the treatment has much broader potential use and success than had previously been thought.

After the transplant, the patient, who wishes to remain anonymous, stopped taking antiretroviral drugs in March 2021, and he has stayed in remission.

SEE ALSO: U.S. cannot afford to fall behind in race against monkeypox, HHS secretary says

“When I was diagnosed with HIV in 1988, like many others, I thought it was a death sentence. I never thought I would live to see the day that I no longer have HIV. City of Hope made that possible, and I am beyond grateful,” the patient said in the City of Hope press release.

Use of stem cell transplants for the general population of HIV patients is unlikely, however.

Experts stressed to NBC News that it would be unethical to try the toxic, possibly fatal procedure on a patient who didn’t already need one for another medical reason, such as leukemia.

Still, HIV researchers were optimistic about new paths to a cure being opened.

“There are fancy new gene editing methods emerging that might one day be able to achieve a similar outcome with a shot in the arm,” Steven Deeks, a professor of medicine in residence at the University of California at San Francisco, told the Wall Street Journal.

The Spanish case involves a woman in her 70s who is in “viral remission”, meaning that, while the virus is still present in her body, her body has controlled the virus’ replication for over 15 years.

The woman, who also wishes to remain anonymous, was originally given less than a year of antiretroviral therapies in 2006 before said treatment stopped.

Juan Ambrosioni, one of the doctors treating her, was quoted by the Wall Street Journal as saying that “she has high levels of two types of immune cells that the virus normally suppresses and that probably help control viral replication.”

Details from both cases will be presented Friday at the 24th International AIDS Conference in Montreal, Canada.

China shut down some businesses and public transportation options Wednesday in Wuhan, the central city where the global COVID-19 pandemic began, in a snap reaction to new infections.

The city’s Jiangxia District, home to more than 900,000 residents, will ban large gatherings; close restaurants, public entertainment venues and farm markets; and suspend some bus and subway services for three days, according to Reuters.

The closures are based on two infections that were discovered during regular screening and two more cases in the close contacts of the infected persons.

Authorities told people not to leave the area and urged travelers not to enter the restricted zone.

Health authorities first detected the virus that causes COVID-19 in Wuhan in late 2019. Officials downplayed the situation at first, but the medical impact was clear. The virus slipped into other nations, causing widespread devastation and a series of societal restrictions in most countries.

The U.S. and other countries have pivoted back to normal activities while relying on vaccines and treatments to keep the disease in check.

China, however, is relying on a draconian “zero COVID” policy that relies on lockdowns and mass testing to box out the virus.

Beijing’s tough approach has sparked a public outcry in cities across China. People have been denied medical services or had trouble accessing food during lockdowns.

Public health experts say the approach might be unsustainable as a scientific matter as the population acquires insufficient immunity from a lack of natural infection and domestic vaccines that aren’t as effective as ones used in the West.

For more information, visit The Washington Times COVID-19 resource page.

Wounded Ukrainian soldiers can now be treated at a U.S. military hospital for the first time since Russia invaded in late February.

A plan approved by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin allows medical treatment for up to 18 wounded soldiers at a time at the Pentagon’s Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany.

For decades, Landstuhl has provided medical treatment for U.S. troops. Many soldiers wounded in Afghanistan and Iraq received early treatment there before being shipped back to the U.S.

Mr. Austin provided verbal guidance in May to begin offering treatment to wounded Ukrainian soldiers and later formalized the plan in a memo titled “Guidance for Medical Treatment of Wounded Ukrainian Service Members,” according to CNN.

An official with U.S. European Command said Landstuhl has yet to treat any wounded Ukrainian troops, CNN reported.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukrainian artillery hit a strategic bridge essential for Moscow to supply its forces occupying Ukraine’s southern region, using a U.S.-supplied precision rocket system to deliver a morale-lifting punch.

The Ukrainian military struck the Antonivskyi Bridge across the Dnieper River in southern Ukraine late Tuesday, the deputy head of the Moscow-appointed administration for the Kherson region, Kirill Stremousov, said.

He said Wednesday the bridge was still standing but its deck was pierced with holes, preventing vehicles from crossing.

The 1.4-kilometer (0.9-mile) bridge sustained serious damage in Ukrainian shelling last week, when it took multiple hits. It was closed for trucks but had remained open for passenger vehicles until the latest strike.

Ukrainian forces used U.S.-supplied HIMARS multiple rocket launchers to hit the bridge, Stremousov said.

The HIMARS system has precision strike capability and has added a more modern technological edge to Ukraine’s dated military assets.

The HIMARS have a longer range, a much better precision and a faster rate of fire compared with Soviet-designed Smerch, Uragan and Tornado multiple rocket launchers used by both Russia and Ukraine.

The billions of dollars in Western military assistance have been crucial for Ukraine’s efforts to fend off Russian attacks, but officials in Kyiv say the numbers are still too small to turn the tide of the war.

While halting traffic across the bridge, at least temporarily, makes only a slight dent in the overall Russian military operation, the strike showed Russian forces are vulnerable and was a minor triumph for Ukrainians.

The bridge is the main crossing across the Dnieper River in the Kherson region. The only other option is a dam at the hydroelectric plant in Kakhovka, which also came under Ukrainian fire last week but has remained open for traffic.

Knocking the crossings out would make it hard for the Russian military to keep supplying its forces in the region amid repeated Ukrainian attacks.

Early in the war, Russian troops quickly overran the Kherson region just north of the Crimean Peninsula that Russia annexed in 2014. They have faced Ukrainian counterattacks, but have largely held their ground.

The accurate targeting of the bridge contrasted with Russia’s indiscriminate shelling of civilian areas since the invasion five months ago.

The governor of Dnipropetrovsk, in the central eastern area of Ukraine, said Wednesday that Russian forces struck two regions with artillery. Gov. Valentyn Reznichenko said that in the town of Marhanets, a woman was wounded and several apartment buildings, a hospital and a school were damaged by the shelling.

“Chaotic shelling has no other goal but to sow panic and fear among the civilian population,” he said.

The Ukrainian attacks on the bridge in Kherson come as the bulk of the Russian forces are stuck in the fighting in Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland of Donbas where they have made slow gains in the face of ferocious Ukrainian resistance.

Russian forces kept up their artillery barrage in the eastern Donetsk region, targeting towns and villages, according to regional governor Pavlo Kyrylenko.

“The Russian army is using scorched earth tactics in attacking the Ukrainian cities,” Kyrylenko said in televised remarks.

He said the region is without gas and power, while water supplies to some areas also have been cut.

In Bakhmut, a key city on the front line of the Russian offensive, the shelling damaged a hotel and caused casualties, Kyrylenko said. A rescue operation was under way.

Amid Moscow’s push to take full control of the eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions, Russians have gained marginal ground northeast of Bakhmut, according to a Washington D.C.-based think tank.

Russian forces, however, are unlikely to occupy significant additional territory in Ukraine “before the early autumn,” the Institute for the Study of War said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy claimed that Russian military losses have climbed to nearly 40,000, adding that tens of thousands more were wounded and maimed. His claim couldn’t be independently verified.

The Russian military last reported its losses in March, when it said that 1,351 troops were killed in action and 3,825 were wounded.

In other developments:

• Six people were wounded when the city of Kharkiv, in the northeast, came under shelling overnight, according to the city mayor, Ihor Terekhov.