US and Western officials say the next few weeks of the war will be critical to the course of the war as Ukraine launches a counteroffensive. The head of MI6, Richard Moore, during the security forum in Aspen, said that Russia is running out of both forces and means. Therefore, during the Ukrainian counteroffensive, the Russians will start to lose.
"The sort of main conversation in the briefing was, you know, what more we can and should be doing for the Ukrainians, literally in the next three to six weeks, very urgently. Ukrainians want to go to the south and do operations in the south. And we want them to be as successful as possible," Elissa Slotkin, the House Armed Services Committee.
"I think that what we heard very firmly from president Zelenskyy and reinforced today is that the Ukrainians really want to hit Russia in the teeth a few times before the winter comes, put them in the best position possible, particularly hitting them down south," Slotkin continued.
Elissa Slotkin also stated that both parties of Congress are in favour of transferring long-range ATACMS missiles for HIMARS to Ukraine. They can reach targets up to 180 miles away, but according to Joe Biden, the US will not transfer these missiles because they could be used against targets in Russia. And this, in turn, will lead to even more significant escalation.
"We were briefed that over 75.000 Russians have either been killed or wounded, which is huge, you've got incredible amounts of investment in their land forces, over 80% of their land forces are bogged down, and they're tired," Democratic representative Elissa Slotkin.
According to official figures, yesterday, the number of Russian deaths in the war against Ukraine exceeded 40.000.
