Ukraine will not be able to conquer the Crimea “in the near future”, high -ranking officials of the US Ministry of Defense at a secret briefing said, Politico writes with reference to aware sources.
According to them, the Pentagon does not believe that Ukraine will have opportunities to displace Russian troops from the peninsula, which Moscow annexed in 2014. Another interlocutor of the publication noted that the success of the APU on the Crimea is not guaranteed.
The reporters at the secret briefing were deputy assistant to the US Minister of Defense for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia Laura Cooper, as well as the head of the operational department of the United Staff, Lieutenant General Douglas Sims. The official representative of the Pentagon refused to comment on the closed event.
Assessment of speakers coincides with the opinion of the chairman of the United Committee of the chiefs of the Staff of General Mark Millie. “I still argue that this year it will be very, very difficult to expel Russian troops with each naughty of Russia occupied by Russia,” Millie
said
Earlier, the head of the military intelligence of Ukraine Kirill Budanov promised to return Crimea in the summer of 2023. “Crimea will be returned to us. I will tell you more: it all began in Crimea in 2014, everything will end there,” he said in an interview with The Washington Post. According to him, the Kremlin will not use nuclear weapons if Kyiv’s peninsula may survive. “Russia is a country from which you can expect a lot, but not frank idiocy. Sorry, but this will not happen. The application of a nuclear strike will lead not only to the military defeat of Russia, but also to the collapse of Russia. And they know this very well,” – Budanov stated.