I amUS Chief of Staff General Mark Milley does not believe that Ukraine will win this year’s war. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has repeatedly said he wants to expel all Russian soldiers from the country, a difficult task, General Milli told the Defense One news site in an interview.
“I’m not saying it’s impossible, I’m saying it’s a very complicated task,” the chief of staff said, pointing to hundreds of thousands of Russians occupying Ukrainian territory. Kyiv considers the withdrawal of the Russian army as the only condition for peace. A ceasefire is unacceptable because in this case Russia would still control parts of Ukraine.
The United States has been one of Ukraine’s main allies in its more than year-long fight against the Russian invasion, and has committed billions of euros in aid. General Milley explained that delivery of ATACMS-type long-range missiles is not planned. “We have relatively few ATACMS missiles, and we need to ensure that we maintain our own ammunition stocks. »
At the same time, the British Ministry of Defense said in its daily war update that the Russian winter offensive was failing. London on Saturday focused on Russian chief of staff Valery Kurasimov, who led a “special military operation” in Ukraine in January. His tenure was characterized by an attempt to launch a general winter offensive aimed at expanding Russian control over the entire Donbas region.
“Eighty days later, it is increasingly clear that the plan has failed,” the ministry statement read. “On several axes of the Donbass front, Russian forces made only marginal gains at the cost of tens of thousands of casualties, largely squandering the temporary advantage they gained in terms of personnel due to the ‘partial mobilization’ of the fallout. »
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