Col. David Butler, a spokesman for the U.S. Army, said Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, spent a few hours with Gen. Valeriy Zalogny, the senior officer in the Ukrainian armed forces. The meeting was arranged after it became clear that Zalogny would not be able to attend Wednesday’s meeting of NATO’s senior military officials in Brussels. He was with Mielle Five other Americans, an interpreter and security personnel. News of the high-level interaction was withheld until its conclusion, with officials citing safety precautions.
“They talked in detail about the defense that Ukraine is trying to mount against Russian aggression,” Butler said of the meeting. “And this is important — when you have two professional military men looking into each other’s eyes and talking about very important topics, there is a difference.”
face-to-face confrontation It happened after a year of distant meetings between the generals and the United States and its allies Expand the arsenal of weapons that they offer to Ukraine—including advanced American combat vehicles, European tanks, and a host of other equipment—before an expected counterattack against Russian forces.
Scope of training provided to Ukrainian forces It has also grown significantlyWith American soldiers in Germany now Preparing a Ukrainian mechanized battalion to better combine how those forces use U.S.-made weapons to maximize their effect on the battlefield, and as other U.S. Army personnel in Oklahoma show their Ukrainian counterparts how to use them Advanced air defense system.
The Kremlin has sharply criticized Western efforts to help Ukraine, accusing Washington and its NATO allies of waging a proxy war against Moscow, and raising fears that Russia could at some point become intolerant of intervention and target the United States or another NATO country. Russian President Vladimir Putin recently named Millie’s Russian counterpart, General Valery GerasimovAs his commander-in-chief in Ukraine, observers said the move is a strong indication that Moscow has no inclination to end its conquest as the war approaches its first year with more than 100,000 killed or wounded on both sides.
Melly arrived in southeastern Poland around 11 a.m. local time and began his meeting with Zalogny about two hours later, Butler said. Some of the Americans traveling with the general, including two journalists, remained at the military base here — a way station used to funnel aid into Ukraine — while Milley traveled closer to the border. Photography was not permitted during the visit, and US military officials asked journalists to withhold precise locations.
The meeting took place a day after a group of civilian officials from the Pentagon and State Department met in Kyiv with President Volodymyr Zelensky and other senior Ukrainian officials. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Secretary of State Anthony Blinken traveled to the Ukrainian capital previously to show support for the Biden administration. Milley did not visit Ukraine, where the US appears to maintain a policy that only a small group of US military personnel assigned to the US Embassy in Kyiv spend time in the country.
Butler said the visit did not pose major security concerns for Mellie, and that he had not gone anywhere he thought was dangerous. The general wanted to give Zaluzhny his impressions of the Ukrainian unit, which had just begun training Supervision of American soldiers in Germany After their visit on Monday, they will discuss Ukrainian needs before a regularly scheduled meeting later this week of the Ukraine Contact Group, a grouping of international partners who have supported the country militarily throughout the war.
“General. Milley’s job here as a military man is to be able to describe the tactical and operational conditions of the battlefield, what the military needs are. The way he does that is one, by understanding them himself, but the second, by speaking to General Zalogny on the basis of regular.”
Tuesday’s visit is the third time Milley has visited the base in southeastern Poland since the war began. The US forces here, who spoke on condition of anonymity under ground rules put in place by the Army, said their mission has expanded in the past few months as the pool of weapons approved for transfer has grown.
Military personnel have improved security at the base since the start of the war, adding new concrete bunkers and thick, sand-filled outer walls known as HESCO barriers to join two batteries of Patriot air defense systems that were deployed in southeastern Poland in the spring.
A US soldier assigned to the Patriot unit said Tuesday that some have been assigned to the base since March and that they are not sure when another unit of soldiers will arrive for rotation and replacement. This is not uncommon for Patriot units, the soldier said, but the lack of predictability put a strain on the unit.
The unit works continuously, with its alerts ebb and flow based on the events of the day.
“We have to respond appropriately to the situation,” the soldier said.