"The conversation about Ukraine’s counteroffensive has shifted from one of excitement to disappointment, as Kyiv’s slow gains lead some U.S. officials and insiders alike to whisper: Should we have listened to Gen. MARK MILLEY?

In November, the Joint Chiefs chair said Ukraine’s strong military position and upcoming winter season combined to make a good time to consider peace talks. Plus, operations to expel Russian forces out of the whole of Ukraine –— which VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY demands — had a slim chance of success. Administration officials immediately scrambled to assure their counterparts in Kyiv that Milley was riffing and not reflecting a secret sentiment in the White House.

But listen to Milley lately, and you can hear the implicit “I told you so.”

“If the end state is Ukraine is a free, independent, sovereign country with its territory intact, that will take a considerable level of effort yet to come,” he told The Washington Post this week. “That’s gonna take a long, long time, but you can also achieve those objectives — maybe, possibly — through some sort of diplomatic means.”

One U.S. official, who didn’t want to run afoul of the administration by offering real views on the record, said the realities of the counteroffensive are sinking in around Washington. Ukraine’s tactics to preserve troops and equipment, Russia’s dug-in positions and the fight on multiple fronts have led to slow advances, shifting a possible breakthrough further into the future.

While the U.S. still backs Ukraine’s fight, the official said, “We may have missed a window to push for earlier talks.” The official also stressed, however, that few believe Moscow has been at all serious about negotiations since the war’s start. And no senior leader felt then, or feels now, that the counteroffensive was a mistaken play, considering how Ukraine maintains full support from the West and has had remarkable success throughout the war. Still, the official declared: “Milley had a point.”

Another U.S. official said the administration is increasingly asking itself this question: “If we acknowledge we’re not going to do this forever, then what are we going to do?”

Notably, no one is treating Milley like a prophet (and we have no indication the general is acting like he called it right from the start). Many people we talked to hastened to add that Kyiv and Moscow actually discussed peace before, that Ukraine recaptured lost northern territory late last year and that allies at this year’s NATO summit committed to the long-term defense of Ukraine. And consider the politics: The administration would’ve been shouted down for dragging Kyiv to the table before the counteroffensive got underway.

But the administration’s once-private outlook is more pessimistic than it let on. As the Post revealed Thursday, the U.S. intelligence community assesses that the operation will fail to achieve a key goal: reaching the southeastern city of Melitopol.

Retaking the city, a Russian logistics hub, has been a crucial piece of Ukraine’s overarching strategy to cut off the land bridge Moscow uses to move its forces and equipment to Crimea and other occupied territories along the Sea of Azov.

One top general acknowledged the challenges Ukraine is facing in its current operations in a roundtable with reporters Friday. ”Nothing ever goes as well as you had hoped it would go if you could do everything perfectly,” said Gen. JAMES HECKER, commander of U.S. Air Forces Europe and Africa. The fields they are pushing through are so heavily mined that Ukrainian forces are finding five or six mines per square meter, Hecker said.

“It's definite progress, but it's slow progress. And of course, all of us would like fast progress. But in a situation like this that's heavily defended and fortified, it's very difficult,” he said. “So slow progress is good, better than the alternatives.”

The administration, however, doesn’t appear like it plans to shift course.

“President [JOE] BIDEN has been clear that any decisions about a negotiated settlement to the war are going to be up to Ukraine and President Zelenskyy. We have been clear about the principle of ‘nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine.’ And we are going to continue to focus on doing everything we can to help Ukraine defend its country against Russia’s brutal invasion,” said NSC spokesperson ADRIENNE WATSON."

How Ukraine is exploiting Biden’s cluster bomb gamble

"Ukrainian civilians and private enterprises are developing drones for use on the front line. The large increase in this cottage industry is the result of years-long corruption and inefficiency in the state arms sector, as well as a growing concern that the U.S. elections could affect weapons procurement. Veronika Melkozerova reports for POLITICO. 

Two Ukrainian drones were shot down over the Bryansk region, Russia’s defense ministry said. Flights were temporarily stopped to and from Moscow’s airports earlier today. The ministry also said a Russian warplane had destroyed a Ukrainian reconnaissance boat in the Black Sea near a Russian gas production facility. Emily McGarvey reports for BBC News. 

A Russian long-range supersonic bomber has been destroyed in a military airfield in the Novgorod region following a Ukrainian drone strike. The attack indicates Ukraine’s ability to strike targets inside Russian territory. Graeme Baker reports for BBC News.

Ukraine has ordered the evacuation of the liberated city of Kupyansk as Russian forces attempt to retake the city and Ukrainian forces concentrate their counteroffensive to the south. Around 2,000 people who refuse to leave have signed releases stating they will not hold local authorities responsible for anything that follows the evacuation. Siobhán O’Grady, Heidi Levine, and Serhii Korolchuk reports for the Washington Post. "

A plane carrying Yevgeny Prigozhin, the mercenary chief who led a short-lived mutiny two months ago, crashed today in a sparsely populated area northwest of Moscow. According to Russian media, Prigozhin and at least one of his top commanders are dead. As is always the case with breaking news, there is much we don’t know, but the sight of Prigozhin’s jet falling out of the sky suggests that Russian President Vladimir Putin has conducted a public execution of a man who was once a trusted friend but later provided the greatest challenge that the Russian dictator has ever faced.

Here’s what we do know. The aircraft was one of Prigozhin’s personal business jets. The plane, a widely used Embraer Legacy 600, took off from Moscow and likely was headed toward St. Petersburg, Prigozhin’s base of operations. It was flying at 28,000 feet before it plunged to earth, according to flight-tracking data. A second jet, also believed to belong to Prigozhin, then turned around and landed safely in Moscow, but Russia’s aviation ministry has confirmed that Prigozhin and the Wagner co-founder Dmitry Utkin were listed as passengers on the crashed jet.

This is functionally the end of the Wagner Group, which has been among the most effective Russian fighting units in Ukraine. But killing Prigozhin and his lieutenants makes sense, at least according to the Mafia logic that governs Putin’s Kremlin. Prigozhin not only threatened Putin’s authority; he humiliated him. During Prigozhin’s ragged rebellion, Putin was visibly furious, but he soon agreed to meet Prigozhin for a discussion in Moscow. For a gangster boss like Putin, having to meet with the man who betrayed him must have been intolerable: The Russian president has reportedly ordered people killed for far less than marching on the capital.

If the plane crash was an execution, however, plenty of questions remain. Why now? And why in Russia? There are several indications that this was not a random aviation accident, but a signature move by the Putin regime to remind Russians, and especially Russia’s elites, that no one survives opposing the Kremlin’s master.

The timing issue may not be all that puzzling. (Why Prigozhin risked being in Russia at all is a larger mystery, but he is, or was, legendarily arrogant.) Although many in both Russia and the West expected Putin to move against Prigozhin almost immediately after the Wagner rebellion last June, his patience may reflect his insecurity. Prigozhin’s almost effortless success in occupying the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don, and the ease with which he marched thousands of men to within some 200 miles of the capital, must have enraged and terrified Putin. The Russian president has probably spent weeks huddled with his most trusted security and military subordinates trying to figure out exactly who knew what about Prigozhin’s plans.

Read: Why coups fail

Rooting out a conspiracy takes time; so does planning a murder. The initial deal between the Kremlin and Prigozhin, brokered by Belarusian President (and Putin crony) Aleksandr Lukashenko, allowed Prigozhin and his men to leave Russia and take shelter in Belarus. But because of that deal, Putin couldn’t kill Prigozhin in Belarus without making a fool of Lukashenko. Likewise, although Prigozhin traveled in dangerous areas—yesterday, he released a video of himself in which he claimed to be in the Sahel—killing him far from home in a place such as Africa might have left some doubt about how he died, or whether he died at all.

Blowing up a plane flying out of Moscow two months to the day after Prigozhin’s rebellion ended, however, sends an unambiguous message. Unless a bomb was on board, only a military system could shoot down a plane at 28,000 feet, and only a Russian military system would be present so deep inside Russia. (The reported crash site is more than 100 miles northwest of Moscow.) The Russian Ministry of Defense—the object of Prigozhin’s fury during his brief rebellion—would have to be involved in an attack at that distance and altitude. If Putin wanted to send a message that Russian Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu was still in favor and that Prigozhin had to pay for his insolence, this was a clear way to do it.

Taking down a business jet is also a message to Russia’s elites, who rely heavily on private aviation to get around the country. If Putin is willing to reach out and kill Prigozhin in broad daylight over Russia, no one is safe. (Recall as well that Putin himself is reported to be jumpy about flying; he travels around Russia in a special train, much like Stalin did in his day.)

One other event in particular suggests a link to Shoigu in this regard: The same day that Prigozhin’s plane went down, two Russian outlets reported that General Sergei Surovikin had been removed from his post as the commander of Russian aerospace forces. Surovikin, nicknamed General Armageddon, was one of the few competent Russian field commanders in Ukraine, but like a series of other Russian generals, he was scapegoated for Russia’s poor military performance and relieved of command. When Prigozhin began his march, Surovikin made what looked very much like a coerced appearance in a video, with a gun in his lap, asking the mutineers to stand down. Rumors flew in Moscow that he knew of Prigozhin’s plans and supported them; he was soon detained (“resting,” according to a Russian official) and disappeared from public view.

If Prigozhin’s plot was aimed at Shoigu with Surovikin’s connivance, then destroying his jet in flight using aerospace assets that might have once been under Surovikin’s command is like throwing a Defense Ministry calling card on the burning bodies. Shoigu might be hated, and Surovikin might have been respected, but—again, to put this in a Mafia context—no one takes a shot at an underboss without permission.

As Ian Fleming’s villain Goldfinger warned James Bond: Once is happenstance; twice is coincidence; three times is enemy action. It’s possible that Prigozhin’s jet suffered a random mishap. It’s possible that the mishap took place exactly two months to the day after Prigozhin’s mutiny. It’s possible that the head of Russia’s air force was relieved at the same time that all this took place. But that’s a hell of a lot of coincidences, especially in a country where few things of importance happen without direction from Red Square.

Prigozhin has almost certainly been living on borrowed time since last June. But if he is dead in today’s crash, Vladimir Putin has taken his revenge in spectacular fashion. Still to be determined, however, is whether another murder will be enough to quell the growing instability in the streets, boardrooms, and barracks of Russia.""