“There has been a tremendous amount of suffering,” Milley stated.
The Pentagon didn’t clarify the way it counted the casualties and so they couldn’t be independently verified by The Washington Post. The final official determine issued by Russia’s Ministry of Defense in September put the variety of Russian useless at 5,937 — which army consultants and Western officers say grossly underestimates the nation’s losses.
Ukraine has launched no casualty figures for its personal troops. President Volodymyr Zelensky claimed in interview with CNN earlier this week that Russia’s casualty fee was ten instances larger than that of Ukraine.
Officials in Kyiv had been fast to dispute Milley’s evaluation on Thursday. “We do have losses and every single life lost is a tragedy,” stated Yuriy Sak, an adviser to the Ukraine Defense Ministry. “But we do have less casualties because we are not using meatgrinder tactics, and our priority is saving soldiers’ lives.”
The Pentagon figures nonetheless trace on the ferocity of the battles which are raging alongside an unlimited, 1000-mile entrance line snaking across the jap edges of Ukraine. Much of the preventing is being waged from World War I-style trenches in which troopers dug into muddy fortifications endure relentless artillery bombardments till they’re compelled to retreat.
The casualty estimates counsel that in 260 days of warfare, a median of 769 troopers have been killed or injured every single day.
The losses on both sides can be practically twice as excessive the 60,000 Americans killed or wounded in 20 years of warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan, in line with Defense Department statistics, and greater than twice the 50,000 useless and wounded suffered by the Soviet Union throughout its ten 12 months warfare in Afghanistan.
Nearly 70,000 Afghan troopers and 50,000 civilians died over twenty years of preventing with the U.S.-backed coalition. But these numbers are nonetheless dwarfed by the figures from Ukraine.
Other current wars have been as bloody — however over an extended timeframe, and with civilians bearing the brunt of the struggling. In Syria, the United Nations estimated that 400,000 folks died in the primary 5 years of the warfare, the overwhelming majority of them noncombatants.
Milley prompt that the announcement by Russia on Wednesday of a retreat from Kherson and the method of winter would possibly supply an opportunity for negotiations. The Biden administration and different Western allies have lately been making an attempt to nudge Ukraine to think about talks with Russia.
The winter months, when temperatures in Ukraine routinely drop nicely beneath freezing, will probably convey a pause in the preventing as Russia seeks to regroup and refit, presenting “a window of opportunity for negotiation,” Milley stated.
“There has to be a mutual recognition that a military victory is probably, in the true sense of the word is maybe not achievable through military means,” he added, “and therefore you need to turn to other means.”
But Ukraine’s current sweep of victories, by way of Kharkiv in the northeast in September and now in Kherson to the south have left Kyiv in no temper for negotiations. Ukrainian officers say they’re assured they will obtain a full army victory over Russia on the battlefield and Zelensky has set preconditions for negotiations, together with a full Russian withdrawal from Ukrainian territory and a promise of reparations — situations that Russia would probably by no means settle for.
Milley stated the United States would proceed to assist Ukraine till their calls for are met. “The United States is going to continue to support Ukraine and its fight for freedom,” he stated. “If negotiations happen, great. If they don’t, they will likely continue fighting into the spring.”
The Kremlin has additionally signaled it’s open to talks, however its personal preconditions are at odds with these of Ukraine: After Russia illegally annexed four regions of Ukraine, Putin said that “the only way to peace” is for Ukraine and the West to acknowledge that the folks of Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia “have become our citizens, forever.”
Despite their huge variations, Milley stated, each side ought to pursue an finish to the preventing.
“When peace can be achieved, seize it,” he said. “Seize the moment.”