“The possibility of a Ukrainian military victory, the expulsion of the Russians from all of Ukraine, including … Crimea, the possibility of that happening any time soon is not great, militarily,” Milley said.
For his part, Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov said Kyiv was working with international allies to build an “integrated and coordinated” air defense system.
Reznikov gave no other details in a tweet the day after Russia launched air strikes across Ukraine, but said “protecting Ukrainian skies” would be a priority at a scheduled meeting with allies in Germany.
“We are working with our partners to establish an integrated and coordinated air defense system. We are preparing for the winter on the battlefield,” he wrote.
After the withdrawal of Kherson
Tuesday’s photos showed that Russian soldiers appeared to have withdrawn from a Ukrainian town across the Dnipro River in exchange for the city of Kherson they abandoned last week, suggesting that one of the biggest retreats during this war may not have ended at the river’s borders.
President Volodymyr Zelensky has told world leaders there will be no slack in Ukraine’s military campaign to expel Russian forces from his country, following last week’s victory in the only regional capital that has fallen under Russian control since the war began.
“We will not allow Russia to wait, mobilize its forces, and then start a new series of terrorism and global destabilization,” Zelensky said in a speech.
Ukrainian troops surrounded by jubilant residents have poured into Kherson in recent days to reap the war’s biggest prize yet, a city that Russian President Vladimir Putin declared six weeks ago would be forever Russian.
And theRussia said last week it was pulling its forces across the wide-flowing Dnipro River to more easily defended positions on the opposite bank. But video footage taken in the town of Oleshki, across a collapsed bridge over the Dnipro from Kherson, showed that Russian forces appeared to have abandoned their trenches there as well..
Further east, Russian-appointed administrative officials said they were drawing staff from the second-largest city, Nova Kakhovka, which lies on the river near a huge strategic dam..
Natalia Homenyuk, a Ukrainian military spokeswoman, said that Moscow is redeploying its forces at a distance between 15 and 20 kilometers from the bank of the Dnipro River to protect its artillery from Ukrainian counterattacks..
She went on to say that Russia has artillery capable of hitting Kherson from these new positions, but “we also have something to respond with“.
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