General Milley talks with Zaluzhnyi several times a week
An American television company has visited a secret command centre from where the military, led by Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the United States, is monitoring the counteroffensive by the Ukrainian Defence Forces.
Source: CBSNews report
Details: The journalist meets with Milley at 06:45. The general is about to speak with Valerii Zaluzhnyi, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
"I talk to him every week, sometimes twice a week, three times a week," says Milley.
Later, the journalist is taken deep into the dungeons of the Pentagon, where maps of the fighting in the east and south of Ukraine are shown on screens.
Milley admits that the war in Ukraine is warfare unlike anything he has ever seen.
Quote: "I've been in a lot of firefights. I've been blown up several times in vehicles – mines and IEDs and RPGs. But never to this degree of intensity."
Details: Regarding the Ukrainian offensive that Milley helped to plan, the general notes that he is encountering stiffer-than-expected Russian resistance. "But that's the difference between war on paper and real war. So, this is real people getting really killed and real vehicles are really blowing up, so people tend to slow down in situations like that. But it's very deliberate, and they're making progress every day," adds the military.
The general says that Ukraine determines the choice of targets and the decision to launch strikes. American partners provide Kyiv with the intelligence information they receive.
Milley admits that the Ukrainians still have a lot of territory to liberate, and they still have a seasonal deterioration in weather conditions ahead of them. So, the Defence Forces of Ukraine are facing a tough fight.
The journalist asks: "If they're taking so many casualties, how much more slow and deliberate progress can they stand?"
"Your question is, how long will the political will of the Ukrainian people withstand this level of carnage? And the same applies to Russia, by the way. That's an unknown answer," says Milley.
Quote: "So, neither side at this point in time have achieved their political objectives through military means," Milley said, "and the war will continue until one side or the other has achieved those means, or both sides have determined it's time to go to a negotiating table [because] they can't achieve their objectives through military means."
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