It is too early to call the Ukrainian counteroffensive a failure because a lot of fighting is still ahead as Kiev progresses slower than anticipated against well-prepared Russian defenses, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley said on Tuesday
WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 18th July, 2023) It is too early to call the Ukrainian counteroffensive a failure because a lot of fighting is still ahead as Kiev progresses slower than anticipated against well-prepared Russian defenses, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley said on Tuesday.
"It (the counteroffensive) is far from a failure, in my view. I think that it's way too early to make that kind of call. I think there's a lot of fighting left to go and I'll stay with what we said before: this is going to be long, it's going to be hard, it's going to be bloody," Milley said during a press briefing.
According to Milley, minefields, not Russian air power, pose the biggest problem for the Ukrainians at the moment.
The Ukrainians still have a significant amount of combat power left and they are preserving it by slowly making their way through all the minefields set up by the Russians, Milley added.
Ukraine launched its much-touted counteroffensive in early June after multiple delays. The Russian Defense Ministry has said that Ukrainian troops are trying to advance in the South Donetsk, Bakhmut, and Zaporizhzhia directions, but without success. A number of Western media have noted the weak results of Kiev's counteroffensive, with Volodymyr Zelenskyy admitting that progress has been "slower than desired."
