Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley said Sunday that Ukraine’s counteroffensive could only have 30-45 days left before the assault is hindered by weather.
“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,” Milley told BBC. “There’s battles not done… they haven’t finished the fighting part of what they’re trying to accomplish.”
He said it was still too early to tell if the counteroffensive had failed and claimed Ukrainian forces were “progressing at a very steady pace through the Russian front lines.” But since the assault was launched in early June, Ukraine has not regained a significant amount of territory.
US officials speaking to the media anonymously have been more candid about Ukraine’s faltering offensive, with some telling The Washington Post that US intelligence has determined Ukraine will fail to meet its main objective of severing Russia’s land bridge to Crimea.
Last month, Newsweek reported that Ukrainian leadership was divided on how to move forward in light of the faltering counteroffensive. Some officials wanted to consolidate what small gains they’ve made to prepare for an expected Russian offensive this winter, while others wanted to press on.
Since the Newsweek report was published, Ukrainian forces have continued to launch attacks across the front, taking heavy losses. “I said at the very beginning of this that this was going to be long, slow, hard, and high-casualty-producing, and that’s exactly what it is,” Milley told BBC.
Milley was calling for peace talks last fall after Ukraine made gains in Kharkiv and Kherson. But the State Department and White House opposed the idea of diplomacy, and the Biden administration helped prepare Ukraine for a counteroffensive that the Discord leaks revealed the US knew would not be successful.
I was wondering how they would excuse their failure when attacking Russian fortifications failed. Now it’s, “It actually didn’t fail, we had to stop because of the weather.”
For that they will let conscripts keep dying for weeks until October.
They’re also saying that “we have now learned how the Russians work” and “how we should proceed in the spring”. This is reminiscent of “we’re shaping the battlefield” in the past, when their attacks didn’t get anywhere.
The war in Russia was not a mistake. Thousand of Ukrainians and Russians died. A major win for the MIC. Apparently killing is the American way of insuring profits for the war mongering contractors.Now they will make a shitload of money rebuilding what they destroy. The shareholders of Bectal and Halliburton thank the Pentagon and the White House.There is no issue of morality when rapacious Capitalism is on the case.I am pretty sure that China,Iran and Africa are next in the dining table.When to the needs and wants of our poorer citizens become a factor. As Johnny Mathis sang in the 60s ,the 12th of never.
Known as Rasputitsa. That can also bog down or prevent a Russian counter offensive if that is planned.
What “counteroffensive “?
Did I miss something?
😉
There is always next year.
And then they can do it all over again. But they’ll be prepared with all those toys that are being promised and we can finally get that god damned WW3 that’s been alluding us going. After that, “next year” will be iffy. Iffy you know what I mean.
Bear says time is running out for Milley’s Folly. FIFY.
I mean Milley tried to argue for negotiations after Ukraine made their gains last year, but was promptly shut down by the swamp and their minions in the MSM.
Not true! They’re not even close to finishing off that last Ukrainian. (Sarcasm)
GREAT sarcasm!
there are probably still a couple of them left
Zelensky government cracks down on conscription loopholes
….As the Kyiv Post reported, men between the ages of 18 and 60 are currently exempt from mobilization if they are enrolled in a higher education course.
The proposed law would limit the exemption to men under the age of 30 in order to increase the number of troops available for the armed forces.
The authors of the draft law admitted that support for conscription is far from universal throughout the country and that “a significant number of individuals of conscription age” exploited the current law to evade conscription during mobilization…Apart from planning to conscript students over aged 30, the Zelensky government is busy introducing a range of measures to expand its pool of reserves to send to the front. This includes growing demands that those eligible abroad be forced to return to the country.
In late August, the Ukrainian Defense Ministry announced changes to the types of permitted medical exemptions in order to force more sick and disabled men into the armed forces. Under the new regulations, people with “clinically cured tuberculosis, viral hepatitis, slowly progressing blood diseases, thyroid gland diseases with minor functional disorders, and those who are HIV-positive but without symptoms” are now fit for military service…According to the Polish conservative outlet Rzeczpospolita, it is estimated that within Poland, a staunch backer of the NATO war in Ukraine against Russia, there are around 80,000 Ukrainian men aged 18-60, who were potentially eligible for military service, who had entered the country since the start of the war and whose whereabouts are currently unknown.In total, over 650,000 men between the ages of 18 and 64 are registered as refugees throughout Europe, according to EU statistics….Just this week, Euronews reported on the well-known secret that tens of thousands of working class Ukrainians would rather be labeled “cowards” and “draft dodgers” than die for Zelensky’s billionaire oligarch government.Ivan Ishchenko told Euronews that he willingly volunteered to join following the invasion. However, after just a month of combat, he fled and paid $5,000 for a government-plated car to escort him to a forest on the border with Hungary.
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/09/11/mlqy-s11.html
Brings back memories of the Viet Nam years with a huge uptick in college admission like Bush and Clinton.
Zelensky is a freakin’ loophole.
Leave out loop, add in ass.
Smart people don’t want to fight stupid wars. Not just in Ukraine.
He’s sending sick, disabled and old people out there now as crash test dummy sacrifices. JFC
look at that map = Crimea is the same color as Russia and all of the brown color territories are apparently also controlled by Russia while the entirety of Ukraine (blue color) is apparently controlled by Ukraine government. i will guess that Russia has probably accomplished what it set out to do from the very beginning.
now uncle sam will continue to throw US tax-dollars into that blue area because that is the ultimate goal of uncle sam’s military industrial complex = the collection of US tax-dollars.
my brother is a school teacher. his wife is a school teacher. my niece is a school teacher.
my mama was a school teacher for 40+ freakin years. all of their entire careers as teachers has consisted of themselves having to purchase the basic school supplies for their students out of their own salaries, but meanwhile the pentagon gets $1 TRILLION tax-dollars every single year.
imagine the future of America if children’s education was an actual priority.
and don’t get me started about the medical “health” industry = that is a whole nother can of worms.
edit = i forgot to mention that my neighbor is also a school teacher.
https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/service/pnp/ds/13100/13124v.jpg#h=1024&w=768
That is one of the most aware T Shirts or bumper stickers ever.
Thank you for your familys service in the futile effort to educate young people. Sort of like pissing into the wind.
++++
Poor Ukrainians were given unrealistic goals and now a deadline to wrap up their counter offense. Dragging Ukraine into a U.S./Vietnam scenario where they’ll just churn the defense spending butter. Will Russia go along with that?