STUTTGART, Germany. The Ukrainian military is pursuing an extremely effective and “mobile” defense, using its innate knowledge of its home territory to stalemate Russian forces on multiple fronts, said Gen. Mark A. Milley, President Biden’s top military adviser. early Thursday.
Although the strategic city of Kherson fell to Russia on Wednesday, officials said Ukrainian forces are fighting along and across Russian positions with what they say is resourcefulness and ingenuity that could stalemate Russian forces for weeks or months.
General Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said tactics used by Ukrainian forces included using mobile weapons systems to confuse the Russians wherever they could. According to him, the Ukrainian troops “fight against the Russian troops with extraordinary skill and courage.”
Standing up to an invading country that is superior to their own and demonstrating their willingness to die to defend it, “the warring Ukrainian people have become the eyes and ears of the world,” General Milli said.
The public comments made by General Milley to reporters who accompanied him to meetings with European officials at NATO were the first since Russian President Vladimir V. Putin began his brutal attempts to take over Ukraine and overthrow the democratically elected government of President Vladimir Zelensky.
General Milli met with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg in Brussels and then traveled to Stuttgart, Germany for talks with US European Command.
Mr. Stoltenberg said that the Ukrainian armed forces, which have been supported in recent days by arms shipments from NATO countries, “performed better and put up more resistance than most experts expected, and certainly more than Russia expected.”