Tuning in to a brief interview with retired U.S. Navy admiral and former Joint Chiefs chairman Mike Mullen, I just heard this question put to him: "Do you believe Ukraine can win in its counteroffensive in Kherson?"
Adm. Mullen paused and carefully answered, as best as I can rephrase: "I do, but it's going to be difficult and it's going to be a long slog." He went on to praise the fighting spirit of Ukraine's forces and said
their military skills have largely evened the score against the Russians, who, he added, had been terrible at their job but have gotten better.
Mullen then came back to the Ukrainians' challenge in a Kherson counteroffensive, noting the Russians' tremendous advantage in firepower.
Not once did the full admiral also note that his team of the U.S. and its vast military could further even the score and, better yet, tip the "game" to Ukraine's advantage by loading up its forces with more heavy artillery, missiles and especially long-range rocketry.
The Russians are hurting; they're hunkering down in Kherson, mostly starved of supplies from Crimea, whose line has been disrupted by Ukrainian strikes on two essential bridges. With the proper and adequate weaponry from the U.S., Ukrainian forces could retake the province — thus militarily preempting Vladimir Putin's loosely scheduled September annexation — and turn around this godforsaken war.
For this American, it's embarrassing that U.S. officials and too many among the military's retired brass so faithlessly, deliberately excise from their war commentary the plain, simple fact that the "long, long slog" in Ukraine — a now-obligatory Western cliché that Mullen also repeated today — could readily be cut short
... by a U.S.-provisioned Ukrainian victory — so near yet tragically, even catastrophically, unreachable.