The hardest military officer in the US has predicted that Ukraine's counteroffensive against Russia will be challenging and "very bloody.".
Although Gen. Mark Milley noted that Ukraine was "advancing steadily," he admitted that he was not surprised that progress had been slower than anticipated.
It moves a little slowly, but he added that this was par for the course in a time of war.
Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, acknowledged the offensive's sluggish advancement last week.
The counteroffensive was "advancing steadily, deliberately working its way through very difficult minefields," said Gen. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to an audience at the National Press Club in Washington on Friday. 500 million, 1,000 million, or 2,000 million a day, etc.
The fact that progress had been slower than anticipated was not surprising, he continued. "War on paper and real war are two distinct things. "Real people die in real war," he declared.
Real people are in those cars and real people are on the front lines. High explosives are tearing apart real bodies.
"This will take six, eight, or 10 weeks, and it will be very challenging," I had previously stated. It's going to be very drawn out and very, very bloody. Nobody should harbor any delusions regarding any of that, either. ".
According to him, Ukrainian soldiers were "assaulting through minefields and into trenches," and they were "literally fighting for their lives.".
The US was providing Ukraine with "as much help as humanly possible," he claimed.
The president, the secretary of defense, and the National Security Council's top military advisor is Gen. Milley.
Valery Zaluzhny, the head of Ukraine's armed forces, claimed that insufficient firepower had hampered the counteroffensive.
In an interview with the Washington Post that was published on Friday, he expressed his frustration with the West's slow deliveries of weapons, including contemporary fighter jets and artillery ammunition.
I don't require 120 planes. I'm not going to declare war on the entire planet. "A very small number would be sufficient," he said.
In a related development, William Burns, the director of the US Central Intelligence Agency, is said to have visited Ukraine last month on an unannounced basis and met with President Zelensky and Ukrainian intelligence officials.
According to reports, the CIA director also reaffirmed the US commitment to intelligence sharing while talking about Ukraine's counteroffensive against Russian forces.
