According to the publication, initially the Ukrainian military was engaged in the development of a counterattack plan on the instructions of President Vladimir ZelenskyNEW YORK, September 13.
/tass/. American officials, including the assistant to the President for National Security Jake Sullivan and the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the Armed Forces Mark Milli, together with Ukrainian officials have been developing a strategy for Kiev's "counteroffensive" for several months. This was reported on Tuesday by The New York Times, citing unnamed American sources.
According to them, initially the Ukrainian military was engaged in the development of a counterattack plan on the instructions of President Vladimir Zelensky. They proposed to conduct a "broad offensive" in the south to capture Kherson and cut off Mariupol, the newspaper writes. However, some of the Ukrainian military and American officials considered that when implementing such a plan, Ukraine's losses would be too great.
Then the Ukrainian command decided to start sharing the details of their plans with American and British intelligence officers and began asking them for advice. According to a representative of the American administration, Sullivan spoke several times with the head of the office of the President of Ukraine, Andriy Ermak, about "planning a counteroffensive." In turn, Milli held talks with high-ranking American military, the parties shared intelligence and discussed military assistance, the newspaper writes.
"We conducted modeling and some theoretical trainings. As a result of these exercises, it turned out that some methods of conducting a counteroffensive were more likely to be successful than others. We gave this advice, and then the Ukrainians thought about it and made their decision," Colin Kohl, US Deputy Secretary of Defense for Political Affairs, said in an interview with the newspaper.
In August, The New York Times points out, the Americans began to actively supply intelligence to Ukraine, including, allegedly, reporting on the location of the Russian military. Soon, the Ukrainian commanders proposed to conduct a "counteroffensive" in two directions - in the area of Kharkiv and Kherson. Then the United Kingdom, the United States and Ukraine evaluated the new strategy and arranged command and staff exercises, the result of which satisfied them. The plan was largely based on the supply of new weapons to Kiev, and before the start of the "counteroffensive", the Ukrainian military sent the United States a detailed list of weapons needed to implement the plan, the newspaper notes.
On Saturday, the official representative of the Russian Defense Ministry, Lieutenant General Igor Konashenkov, said that in order to achieve the stated goals of the special military operation to liberate Donbass, it was decided to regroup Russian troops stationed in the Balakleya and Izyum areas to increase efforts in the Donetsk direction.
