WASHINGTON, July 23 (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that while Ukraine has reconquered half the territory that Russia initially seized in its invasion, Kyiv faced a “a very hard fight” to win back more.
“It’s already taken back about 50% of what was initially seized,” Blinken said in an interview to CNN on Sunday.
“These are still relatively early days of the counteroffensive. It is tough,” he said, adding: “It will not play out over the next week or two. We’re still looking I think at several months.”
Hopes that Ukraine could quickly clear Moscow’s forces from its territory following the launch of a summer counteroffensive are fading as Kyiv’s troops struggle to breach heavily entrenched Russian positions in the country’s south and east.
Late last month President Volodymyr Zelenskiy was quoted as saying that progress against Russian forces was “slower than desired” but that Kyiv would not be pressured into speeding it up.
I don’t think size is an issue. You need to think of the war as Ukraine supplying the bodies and the entirety of nato supplying the combined weapons, funding, manufacturing, strategy, intelligence and planning. Ukraine has the bodies necessary to make numerical advantages moot.
I suspect that negotiations won’t come until after this christmas, going into the string of upcoming elections.
To decision makers it’s not though, this is the problem. They’re all perfectly happy to sacrifice all these lives, the US warmongers are happy to sacrifice any foreign lives against their adversaries while the Ukrainian bourgeoisie have used the war as cover for some of the most brutal right wing crackdowns I’ve ever seen, complete banning of all left parties, shutdown of media, and the complete and total rollback of 100% of workers rights. They have created a state that allows for absolute maximum exploitation of the people with no left opposition. The ruling class see this as a great win for them, the true-believers of the ideological fascists probably genuinely care about the borders of the nation but the bourgeoisie couldn’t give a fuck. So this leaves it up to the US really when to end the war by allowing negotiations, since its only the west propping up Ukraine that allows it to continue it will always lie in their hands to decide. I suspect that will come with a combination of elections (both US, Ukraine and several in Europe) and them wanting to switch their attention to China.
It’s an easy way to make progress slow. Just cover the land in deadly munitions. Nevermind the fact that for the next 50 years 98% of the deaths they cause will be civilians :/