White House: Ukraine has lost a “significant” part of its forces.
According to Russia Today, White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan claims that although Ukraine has lost a significant part of its forces in counterattacks against Russia, it has “significant” reserve forces that it can send to the battlefield.
Asked if “the real counterattacks haven’t started yet?”, Sullivan asserted that the counterattacks “started the very day the first Ukrainian risked his life.”
He added: “In these counter-attacks, the number of casualties and deaths of Ukrainian soldiers is significantly high, and therefore the counter-attacks are ongoing and progressing with difficulty, and we also predicted such a problem.”
Sullivan further claimed: However, Ukraine has significant combat forces at its disposal that have not yet been deployed.
According to Sullivan, Kyiv is currently trying to choose the right moment to deploy them to maximize their effectiveness on the battlefield. Pointing out that Washington is in close contact with the Ukrainians about the conditions of this troop deployment, he said: “At this specific moment when they make this decision, then we will see the possible results of the counterattacks in the real sense.”
These comments came as Russian President Vladimir Putin said yesterday (Friday) that the West was clearly disappointed despite the “huge amounts of resources sent to Kyiv” and that the counterattacks that had been trumpeted by it had not yielded any results and had resulted in high casualties among Ukrainians.
Senior Pentagon officials insist it is too early to call the counterattack a “failure” and that Washington expected the operation to be bloody and lengthy all along. The New York Times wrote last week that after Ukraine lost 20% of its weapons in counterattacks in just two weeks, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has halted operations aimed at increasing ammunition.
