A top US official said that Russia has reconstituted nearly all of its military losses in Ukraine. A core objective for the White House’s $130 billion proxy war in Ukraine was to inflict “strategic defeat” on Russia and leave its forces crippled.
Speaking at an event hosted by the Center for New American Security, a major pro-war DC think tank, Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell lamented that Moscow has quickly recovered from any losses sustained on the battlefield.
“We have assessed over the course of the last couple of months that Russia has almost completely reconstituted militarily,” he told the audience on Wednesday.
The admission by Campbell highlights Washington’s failures during the proxy war in Ukraine. After Russia’s invasion in February 2022, the US and UK promised President Volodymyr Zelensky that they would provide everything Ukraine needed to win the war and reclaim its lost territories.
In April of that year, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin explained Washington’s overall policy goal in the war, saying, “We want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine.”
However, two years into the conflict, it is clear that the goal remains unachievable. While Austin claimed sanctions would devastate the Russian arms industry, Moscow is producing multiple times the number of artillery shells as Ukraine’s supporters combined. Additionally, Russia has developed new weapons that are devastating the Ukrainian forces.
Russian troops have made steady gains in recent months, gradually pushing westward since a major Ukrainian retreat from the stronghold city of Avdiivka in February. Zelensky appears increasingly desperate and has authorized several ill-fated attacks on Russian soil while lowering Ukraine’s minimum conscription age to 25.
Still, some Ukrainian officers warn the move may not make a difference on the battlefield. One officer who served under former Commander-in-Chief Valery Zaluzhny said, “There’s nothing that can help Ukraine now because there are no serious technologies able to compensate Ukraine for the large mass of troops Russia is likely to hurl at us.”
“We don’t have those technologies, and the West doesn’t have them as well in sufficient numbers,” he added.
