Cavoli’s assessment comes from “very close contact with our Ukrainian colleagues, and I’m confident that they that they will hold the line,” he added.
Despite Russia pressing along the frontlines with Ukraine, and recently launching an attack near Ukraine’s second city of Kharkiv, Cavoli said he was uncertain that this was Moscow’s full-scale summer offensive.
“What we don’t see is large, large numbers of reserves being generated someplace,” he said.
Cavoli added that it’s difficult to know if Russia’s effort has run out of gas. “Whether an offensive is stopped or not takes a little bit of time to figure out,” he said.
Meanwhile, in the wake of the U.S. Congress agreeing on a $61 billion military aid package for Kyiv after months of delay, Ukrainians are right now “being shipped vast amounts of ammunition, vast amounts of short range air defense systems and significant amounts of armored vehicles,” he said.
Although Russia failed in its bid to overwhelm Ukraine, it should not be underestimated. In the more than two years of fighting, Russia has improved in areas such as logistics and industrial production “where they are actually moving forward faster than we in Europe and in North America,” Admiral Rob Bauer, chair of the NATO Military Committee, said at the same press conference.
