With thousands of Ukrainian losses during the ongoing “counteroffensive”, Kiev appears to be “desperate for manpower” and is trying to rectify this problem by “forcing people into uniform inside the country that are not really capable of fighting” and attempting to repatriate Ukrainians of military age from overseas, Macgregor said during an interview with Norwegian political scientist Glenn Diesen.
“So I think the Ukrainian ground war, for all intents and purposes, is either at a standstill or perhaps even over,” he remarked.
Macgregor did point out, however, that Kiev may instead resort to attacking Russia with long-range weapons acquired from Western sponsors, such as Storm Shadow and Taurus missiles, with the colonel suggesting that the recent Ukrainian attack on Sevastopol was an example of such a strike.
He noted that this course of actions does not bode well for Ukraine as it essentially helps convince Moscow that the Ukrainian conflict can only be resolved through military means.
16 September 2023, 15:16 GMT
Macgregor also lamented that the US leadership mulls what other armaments “short of a nuclear weapon” they can use via the Ukrainians instead of attempting to negotiate a peaceful solution to the Ukrainian conflict with Russia.
“The Russians would love to sit down and talk to somebody who is willing to examine where we stand – no one will do it,” he said. “So this is why I call this phase of the war, it’s no longer the Ukrainian phase, it is now the Biden phase of the war. And the Biden phase of the war is long range strikes.”
He warned that such long range strikes into the Russian territory will not convince the Russians to acquiesce to the US’ demands, as the strategists in Washington apparently believe.
“If anything, it is going to persuade the Russians that they must attack and attack decisively to the west,” Macgregor stated.
Finding itself unable to defeat the Russian forces on the battlefield, the regime in Kiev has resorted to carrying out terror strikes against population centers and civilian infrastructure in Russia.
While so far these attacks were mostly conducted using drones and Soviet-era ordnance, as well as by sending teams of Ukrainian terrorists across the border, odds are high that Kiev may also start actively using for these purposes the long-range missiles provided by its NATO sponsors.