General Mark Milley reportedly advised Kiev to leverage its 2022 battlefield gains in negotiations with Moscow
Outgoing US Secretary of State Antony Blinken urged Ukraine to continue to fight Russia rather than pursue peace negotiations in 2022, the New York Times reported on Saturday.
According to the newspaper, Blinken insisted that Ukraine should press on with its military campaign in late 2022, despite the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mark Milley, advising Kiev to capitalize on its battlefield successes by seeking peace talks with Moscow.
“Less a peacemaker than a war strategist,” the US diplomat frequently argued against more “risk-averse Pentagon officials,” lobbying for advanced American weaponry to be sent to Ukraine, the NYT wrote.
Washington has spent “approximately $100 billion” on Ukraine since the conflict escalated in February 2022, while allies and partners have contributed an additional $150 billion, Blinken said during a January appearance at the Council on Foreign Relations.
The outgoing administration of Joe Biden has expedited arms deliveries to Kiev ahead of the inauguration of US President-elect Donald Trump, who has indicated that he could reduce military aid to Ukraine in favor of addressing domestic priorities.
The Biden administration had been covertly arming Ukraine months before the conflict intensified, Blinken admitted in a January interview with the NYT. “Starting in September and then again in December, we quietly got a lot of weapons to Ukraine to make sure that they had in hand what they needed to defend themselves – things like Stingers, Javelins that they could use,” he said.
Russia and Ukraine initially engaged in peace negotiations in early 2022 in Istanbul. Both sides provisionally agreed to a truce under which Kiev would renounce its NATO membership ambitions, adopt neutrality, and limit its military size in exchange for international security guarantees. However, Ukraine later withdrew from the talks at the urging of then-UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, according to David Arakhamia, a Ukrainian MP allied with Vladimir Zelensky and Kiev’s chief negotiator at the discussions.
Last month, Swiss diplomat Jean-Daniel Ruch similarly accused the US and UK of derailing peace talks between Kiev and Moscow. Speaking to the French-language media outlet Anti-These, Ruch claimed that Johnson acted “on duty for the Americans.”
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Russia has retaken majority of territory Ukraine occupied in Kursk region – MOD
Moscow has reiterated its willingness to resume peace negotiations, provided they are based on the Istanbul draft agreements and reflect the “new territorial realities,” including the accession of four former Ukrainian regions to Russia and recent battlefield developments.
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