The Armed Forces counter -offensive strategy was developed for several months - NYT

These negotiations were attended by US Presidential Assistant Jake Sullivan and the Chairman of the Committee of the Headquarters of the Armed Forces Mark Millie. Western colleagues all this time gave their advice to Kiev, and also expressed their strategic considerations, the publication said. The authors of the material emphasize that the counter -offensive was initially planned by the Ukrainian military leadership on the instructions of President Vladimir Zelensky.

Then it was proposed to perform a powerful counterattack in the south of Ukraine. The calculation went to Kherson's capture and Mariupol's "cutting". Having analyzed this option, Ukrainian military officials and Western allies decided to change the plan. In this case, the projected losses of the Armed Forces would be too large. In this regard, the Ukrainian leadership decided to share the details of plans with American and British intelligence staff.

According to a representative of the US administration, Sullivan spoke several times with the head of the Presidential Office of Ukraine Andriy Ermak about planning a counter -offensive. Millie spoke with high -ranking US military, the parties shared the intelligence and discussed military assistance, the newspaper reports. "We made modeling and some theoretical trainings. As a result of these exercises, it was found out that some ways of counter -offensive would be more successful than others.

We gave this advice, and then the Ukrainians thought it and made their decision," - said In an interview with the newspaper, the US Deputy Defense Minister for Political Issues Col. At the same time, the United States told how Ukraine's counter -offensive hit Russian President Vladimir Putin. The White House stated that since the beginning of a full -scale war, many Russian soldiers were not ready for a real battle with the Armed Forces. Many of them escaped or were captured.