US General Mark Milley said it was too early to call the counterattack launched by Ukrainian forces in June to recapture areas militarily occupied by Russia a failure.
“The offensive began about 90 days ago. “It was slower than planned, but there is a difference between what Clausewitz called war on paper and a real war,” Milley said in statements to Britain’s BBC.
“These are real people in real vehicles fighting through real minefields, and there is real death and destruction and there is real friction. There is still a reasonable time to fight, about 30 or 45 days,” he added.
For Milley, “the fight is not over yet.” “The Ukrainians haven’t stopped fighting (…), so we’ll see. It’s still too early to say how this will turn out. “Moreover, they achieved at least partial success in what they set out to do, and that is important.” . Then the rain comes and everything becomes very muddy,” he added.
Under these circumstances “it will be very difficult to maneuver and then the harshest winter will come.” “At this point we will see how things go, but at the moment it is too early to say whether this offensive has failed or “Not,” he emphasized.
For his part, the head of Ukrainian military intelligence, Kirilo Budanov, emphasized that they are still superior to the Russians in terms of “creativity and flexibility.”
“They are quite behind, but they are adapting and changing their tactics and the way they use their forces. They have failed miserably in their strategy, but their tactics show some improvements,” he noted during his speech at the European Strategy Forum in Yalta this Saturday in Kiev.
“Now they are using drones in large numbers. Before the war they didn’t even understand its meaning, and now they adapt and copy us,” he explained.
