US says Russia cannot win in Ukraine, Moscow sees long war ahead

Russia will not achieve a military victory in Ukraine and Kyiv’s forces are unlikely to push back all Russian troops from their territory any time soon, the United States’s highest-ranking military official has said.

“This war, militarily, is not going to be won by Russia. It’s just not,” General Mark Milley, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on Thursday.Russia’s original strategic objectives, including toppling the government in Kyiv, “are not achievable militarily”, Milley told journalists after the conclusion of a virtual meeting of dozens of countries that are members of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, which is also known as the Ramstein group.

There are also hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers in Ukraine, which would make Kyiv’s objective of recapturing all territory lost to Moscow’s forces unlikely “in the near term”, Milley said.

“That means fighting is going to continue, it’s going to be bloody, it’s going to be hard. And at some point, both sides will either negotiate a settlement or they’ll come to a military conclusion,” he said.

Milly’s assessment adds to a number of forecasts that the war in Ukraine appears set to drag on, with neither side positioned to win a clear-cut victory and no negotiations currently taking place.

According to comments published by Russia’s RIA news agency on Thursday, Medvedev described an ongoing conflict involving years of fighting with Ukraine, interspersed with multiple years of truces before fighting renewed.

“This conflict will last a very long time, most likely decades,” the RIA news agency cited Medvedev as saying during a visit to Vietnam.

“As long as there is such a power in place [in Kyiv], there will be, say, three years of truce, two years of conflict, and everything will be repeated,” said Medvedev, now the deputy chairman of Putin’s powerful Security Council.

Known for regularly making hardline comments on Ukraine and those considered Moscow’s enemies, Medvedev said earlier this year that a Russian defeat could trigger a nuclear war.

Tensions between Moscow and Washington continues to grow as the US spearheads the push for international support and military aid for Ukraine, including coordinating arms supplies from dozens of countries. In an apparent policy U-turn, the US last week announced it would support giving Ukraine advanced US-made F-16 warplanes.

In total, Ukraine’s supporters have provided nearly $65bn in security assistance to the country, US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin said at the press conference on Thursday.