The war between Russia and Ukraine is at a stalemate, despite the ongoing counteroffensive by Ukraine’s armed forces, said John Kirschhofer, a spokesman for US military intelligence.
“Of course, we are at an impasse,” Kirschhofer said, assessing the state of the military conflict, as quoted by Bloomberg. According to him, providing Kiev with more powerful weapons, including cluster bombs and long-range Storm Shadow missiles, will not fundamentally help change the course of the war.
“None of these things, unfortunately, is the holy grail that the Ukrainians are looking for that will allow them to break through,” Kirschhofer said. “One of the things that the Russian leadership believes is that they can survive despite the support of the West for Ukraine,” added a Pentagon official.
Kirschhofer’s view of the Ukrainian counteroffensive, however, differs from that of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, who said in June that Ukraine’s armed forces were “steadily moving forward.” At the same time, Milley warned that the confrontation will be “very long” and “very bloody”.
During the month of the counter-offensive of the armed forces of Ukraine, which began on June 4, Kiev freed from Russian occupation more than 158 square kilometers of territory in the southern direction, reported the Deputy Minister of Defense of Ukraine Anna Malyar. According to the DeepState project, Ukrainian forces have deoccupied 121 square km of territory.
Among other things, the armed forces of Ukraine managed to take control of all the main heights around Bakhmut, which Russia captured, losing up to 30 thousand soldiers and mercenaries in battles that lasted nine months. “The enemy is trapped,” Oleksandr Sirsky, the commander of the ground forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, said on July 10. According to him, the positions of the Russian army were taken under fire control and it was forced to leave them.
At the same time, the losses of the Russian army since the beginning of the Ukrainian counter-offensive have reached a record since at least March this year, British intelligence reported. Notably, at least 18 officers were killed, including one general, two colonels and three lieutenant colonels.
US President Joe Biden previously expressed confidence that military action in Ukraine cannot continue for years. At some point, the Russian authorities will come to the conclusion that their continuation “is not in Russia’s interest – not economically, not politically, not in any other way,” Biden said.
The Pentagon: Ukraine now has American cluster munitions
Ukraine has already received American cluster munitions, a senior Pentagon official said, quoted by Reuters.
A little earlier, the spokesman of the Taurian military command, Valery Shershen, reported that Ukraine had just received cluster munitions, but had not yet used them.
Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that new Western arms supplies to Ukraine “they won’t give her anything, they will only make the situation worse”TASS reported.
“From the point of view of possible changes on the battlefield, the new arms deliveries will not give anything to Ukraine, they will only worsen the situation, and for the Ukrainian side.” he told Russia-24 television.
According to Putin, the new supplies “will inflame the conflict even more”.
“If someone is interested in this, and it seems that there are such “interested parties”, then this is the best way to realize the task in question – to inflame the conflict even more through the supply of new weapons.” said the Russian president, quoted by BTA.
The US believes the cluster munitions, which open in mid-air and release dozens of smaller projectiles, will help Ukrainian forces break through Russian front lines, the Associated Press notes.
American leaders debated the complex issue for months before President Joe Biden made the final decision, which he described as “very hard”because this weapon takes the lives of many civilians.
More than 120 countries have signed the international convention to ban cluster munitions, but the USA, Russia and Ukraine are not among them, AP adds. Moscow and Kiev used this type of weapon during the war in Ukraine.
Washington has said it will send a scaled-down version of the munitions “error rate”.
This means that there will be fewer individual explosives that will not detonate. Pentagon officials indicated that thousands of cluster munitions would be provided to Kiev, but did not specify a specific number.
Air Defense of Ukraine destroyed 16 attack and 7 reconnaissance Russian drones, one person was injured
The Air Defense Forces of Ukraine destroyed 16 out of a total of 17 attack and 7 reconnaissance Russian drones overnight, Ukrinform reported, citing a statement in Telegram of the Ukrainian Air Force.
The agency notes that one person was injured in the drone attack by Russian forces against the city of Kryvyi Rih (Kryvyi Rih in Ukrainian).
On the night of July 13-14, 2023, the Russian army attacked Ukraine with 17 Iranian Shahed-136/131 attack drones from the southeast (Primorsko-Akhtarsk city), the statement said.
In the southern and eastern regions, 16 Shahed drones were destroyed. Air defenses also shot down a reconnaissance drone overnight and destroyed six more drones at the operational-tactical level during the past 24 hours, the Ukrainian Air Force reported.
Anti-aircraft missile units, fighter jets, mobile fire groups of the Air Force and air defense units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine took part in the operations.
In addition, the Ukrainian Air Force has carried out up to 20 airstrikes against the Russian occupiers today and in the past few days.
Oleksiy Danilov: I wouldn’t pay much attention to what Wallace said
The Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council (NSDC) of Ukraine Oleksiy Danilov said in an interview with the British “Guardian” that Kiev should not pay attention to the words of the Minister of Defense of the United Kingdom Ben Wallace about the need to thank The West for support. According to Danilov, Wallace said it without thinking and “already regrets it”.
Wallace told the alliance summit in Vilnius that in the West “people want to see gratitude” for supporting Ukraine and Kiev should pay more attention to that. “We are not Amazon,” the British defense minister stressed, referring to the global Internet commerce company.
“I wouldn’t pay much attention to what Wallace said,” Danilov pointed out. “Anyone can say something in an emotional state and then regret it. I know for sure that this is not his true position,” explained the secretary of the National Security Council.
V. The “Guardian” assumes that the reason for Wallace’s statement may be Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s dissatisfaction with the fact that the alliance countries refrained from inviting Ukraine to NATO at the summit in Vilnius.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak quickly distanced himself from Wallace’s words, and Zelensky said: “I don’t know what he wants to say and how else to thank him. Let him write to me… Maybe we should wake up in the morning and personally thank the minister.”
“If everyone helped us as much as Britain is helping us, we would have a completely different situation now,” Danilov told the Guardian.
“Thanks to Great Britain and the United States, we were able to survive during the first period of the war. The first person our president talked to at the beginning of hostilities was Boris Johnson. I still have this historical record,” added Danilov.
2023-07-14 10:45:48
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