Ukraine’s military may have as little as a month left before the weather brings any attempts to wage further offensive operations to a standstill, Pentagon Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley has said.
“There’s still a reasonable amount of time, probably about 30 to 45 days’ worth of fighting weather left, so the Ukrainians aren’t done, this battle’s not done. And they haven’t achieved – they haven’t finished the fighting part of what they’re trying to accomplish,” Milley said in a joint interview with British state media on Sunday alongside his British counterpart, Sir Tony Radakin.
“So we’ll see. It’s too early to say how this is gonna end. They at least have achieved partial success in what they set out to do,” Milley assured, citing what he characterized as “very steady progress” and a “depth of combat power” on the front lines, but without going into specifics.
“We’ll get the cold as you mentioned. It’ll start uh, the rains will come in, it will become very muddy and it’s be very difficult to maneuver at that point and then you’ll get to deep winter, and then at that point we’ll see where things go. But right now, it is way too early to say that this offensive is failed or not failed. There’s still heavy fighting going on. The Ukrainians are still plugging away with steady progress through the various defensive belts that the Russians have put in place,” the Joint Chiefs chairman said.
Radakin served up an even more optimistic assessment, assuring that “Ukraine is winning and Russia is losing” because Moscow has failed to “subjugate” the country (which was never actually among Russia’s objectives).
“And you’re seeing the international community also applying economic pressure and diplomatic pressure, and Russia is suffering because of that. And it’s broken these rules, and it’s paying the cost,” the admiral added.
Sunday’s interview follows reports late last month that Milley, Radakin, and NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe Christopher Cavoli had intervened directly in Ukraine’s strategy planning to demand that Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Valerii Zaluzhnyi change tactics in an attempt to reverse the counteroffensive’s wilting fortunes.
Ukraine’s three-month old counteroffensive, which began on June 4, has made almost no gains against heavily entrenched, multilayered Russian defensive positions backed by tank support, artillery, and air superiority, with the counteroffensive’s sole accomplishment to date being the penetration of Russian defenses outside the village of Rabotino in Zaporozhye, which Washington immediately hailed as “progress.”
Ukraine’s forces have paid a staggering price in lives and equipment for these small gains, with Russia’s Defense Ministry estimating this week that the Ukrainian military had lost over 66,000 troops and some 7,600 pieces of military equipment since June alone. US officials, meanwhile, have estimated that up to half a million soldiers have now been killed or injured in the proxy war, which could have ended last spring if Washington and London hadn’t sabotaged Russian-Ukrainian peace negotiations.
Western Publics Growing Weary
Officials in Kiev, Washington and Brussels have readily admitted that Ukraine’s government and military would quickly collapse if the West halted its support for the proxy war against Russia. Last month, polling showed that a slim majority of Americans now oppose sending more aid to Kiev.
The shift in public attitudes has been accompanied by an unprecedented rise in antiwar voices in US presidential politics, with Republican frontrunner and former president Donald Trump and Democratic presidential hopeful Robert F. Kennedy Jr both promising to take immediate steps to resolve the crisis if elected, and GOP hopefuls including Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and businessman Vivek Ramaswamy opposing sending more money to Kiev and demanding that the EU “step up” its own support.
The Trump brand ‘America First’-led opposition to Ukraine funding is reportedly resulting in a growing rift within the GOP between antiwar voices and the party leadership, which continues to stand with the White House and the majority of Democrats in funding the proxy war indefinitely.
All told, the United States and its allies have now pledged to give Kiev approximately $100 billion in military aid alone, with one recent analysis by a major Washington-based think tank calculating that the crisis could cost Washington some $600 billion more even if the fighting stopped today.
1 September 2023, 13:03 GMT