Senior Pentagon Official Says War Could Last A Long Time: Praises Ukrainian Troops' Morale, But Says Russia Remains Superior

Kondisi di Mariupol, Ukraina. (Wikimedia Commons/MVS.gov.ua/Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine)

JAKARTA - A senior United States Ministry of Defense (Pentagon) official said the Ukraine war could continue for a long time even though Kyiv forces recaptured Kharkiv territory and they used substantial US artillery supplies.

The official warned analysts who said Russian troops had reached capacity and could within weeks reach the point where they could no longer advance.

"It's hard to know where this is going over time," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, quoted by the Daily Sabah May 20.

The official praised Ukrainian troops for their command and control, cohesion and passion, calling them "no less historic" than Russian troops.

But he said the Russians still had a numerical advantage and a "significant amount" of spare combat capacity, maintaining their position along the long front line from Donbass south and west to Mykolaiv.

"All that, combined with the fact that we are talking about Ukrainian territory that the two sides have fought over for eight years, leads us to continue to believe that this could be a protracted battle," the official said.

Some respected military analysts have suggested Russian troops could run out of steam in the coming weeks.

The Russian military is "close to breaking point in Ukraine," wrote former Australian military general Mick Ryan, saying Moscow's forces were "corroding physically, morally and intellectually from within."

Meanwhile, Michael Kofman, director of Russian Studies at security think-tank CNA in Washington, wrote last week, "Russian options are shrinking."

"The more they drag their feet, the further their ability to sustain the war gets worse, and the worse their choices go on," Kofman said.

And, an analyst who posts detailed daily updates on the war situation on Twitter under the pseudonym "Jomini of the West" refers to military theorist Carl von Clausewitz's concept of a "peak point," the peak of a military's combat capability after which an attack is untenable.

"Russian forces may be approaching a culmination point where they will have no choice but to halt offensive actions for broader reparations to recoup combat losses," the analyst wrote.

Pentagon officials say Russian forces face ongoing problems defending their invasion.

"Combat capability itself doesn't win wars. You have to have the will to fight, you have to have good leadership. You have to have command and control, they suffer from it," the official said.

But the official said that after Ukrainian forces recently forced Russia away from Kharkiv, the country's second-largest city, neither side has made major gains along their long front.

"This is a knife fight," the official said, referring to the close-quarters fighting and shooting in Donbass, as well as the battle lines near Kherson and Mykolayiv.