Russia-Ukraine war live: top US general predicts ‘very long’ counteroffensive; CIA chief reportedly visits Kyiv for talks | Ukraine

The CIA director, William Burns, travelled to Ukraine recently and met with intelligence counterparts and President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, a US official confirmed to Agence France-Presse on Friday.

The trip was not reported at the time and comes amid Ukraine’s counteroffensive.

During his trip Burns reaffirmed “the US commitment to sharing intelligence to help Ukraine defend against Russian aggression”, the news agency quoted the US official as saying.

According to the Washington Post, which first reported the visit, Ukrainian officials shared plans to claw back Russian-occupied territory and begin ceasefire negotiations by the end of the year.

Burns “travelled to Ukraine as he has done regularly since the beginning of Russia’s recent aggression more than a year ago”, the US official said. The Post reported that the visit occurred in June.

The trip took place before the 24-hour rebellion led by Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin, according to the official.

The mutiny, widely seen as the biggest threat to Kremlin authority in decades, “was not a topic of discussion”, the official added.

Ukraine’s counteroffensive will be very difficult and achieving gains will take a long time and be “very, very bloody”, the top US military officer has warned

Army general Mark Milley told the National Press Club in Washington that the counteroffensive was “advancing steadily, deliberately working its way through very difficult minefields … 500 meters a day, 1,000 meters a day, 2,000 meters a day, that kind of thing”.

Reuters also reports that Ukraine has been cautious in publicly counting gains in the counteroffensive it launched last month to reclaim Russian-occupied territory. President Volodymyr Zelenskiy acknowledged last week that it was going “slower than desired”.

Milley said he was unsurprised progress was slower than some people and computers might have predicted.

War on paper and real war are different. In real war, real people die. Real people are on those front lines and real people are in those vehicles. Real bodies are being shredded by high explosives.

Milley added:

What I had said was this is going to take six, eight, 10 weeks, it’s going to be very difficult. It’s going to be very long, and it’s going to be very, very bloody. And no one should have any illusions about any of that.

Welcome back to our continuing live coverage of Russia’s war in Ukraine. I’m Adam Fulton and here’s a quick look at the latest.

The top US military officer, army general Mark Milley, has warned that Ukraine’s counteroffensive will be very difficult and that achieving gains will take a long time and be “very, very bloody”.

“No one should have any illusions about any of that,” he said in Washington.

CIA director William Burns, meanwhile, travelled to Ukraine recently and met with intelligence counterparts and President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in a trip that was not reported at the time, a US official has confirmed to Agence France-Presse.

According to the Washington Post, which first reported the visit, Ukrainian officials shared plans to take back Russian-occupied territory and begin ceasefire negotiations by the end of the year.

More on those stories shortly. In other news as it approaches 9am in Kyiv:

• The top US military officer, army general Mark Milley, said he was unsurprised that progress in Ukraine’s counteroffensive was slower than some people might have predicted. “This is going to take six, eight, 10 weeks, it’s going to be very difficult. It’s going to be very long, and it’s going to be very, very bloody,” he said. “And no one should have any illusions about any of that.”

• Ukraine’s counteroffensive plans are hobbled by the lack of adequate firepower, from modern fighter jets to artillery ammunition, the country’s military commander-in-chief, Valerii Zaluzhnyi, said in an interview published on Friday.

• CIA director William Burns called Russian spy chief Sergei Naryshkin after last week’s aborted mutiny in Russia to assure the Kremlin that the United States had no role in it, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal have reported. The call was the highest-level contact between the two governments since the attempted mutiny, the WSJ said.

• Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko has said he is certain Russian tactical nuclear weapons deployed in his country will never be used. Lukashenko and Russian president Vladimir Putin have acknowledged that some tactical weapons have arrived in Belarus and the remainder would be put in place by the end of the year. Lukashenko said on Friday: “As we move along, we become more and more convinced that they [the weapons] must be stationed here, in Belarus, in a reliable place.”

• A teacher and another employee of a school in the Donetsk region have been killed after the building was shelled, according to a report from Suspilne, Ukraine’s state broadcaster.

• Pope Francis said there was no apparent end in sight to the war in Ukraine as his peace envoy wrapped up three days of talks in Moscow.

• Russia is reducing its presence at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Ukraine’s military intelligence directorate has claimed. It said that among the first to leave the nuclear power station were three employees of Russian state nuclear firm Rosatom who had been “in charge of the Russians’ activities”.

• Ukrainian prosecutors charged a Russian politician and two suspected Ukrainian collaborators with war crimes over the alleged deportation of dozens of orphans from the formerly occupied southern city of Kherson, some of them as young as one, Reuters reported.

• The US is strongly considering sending cluster munitions to Ukraine to boost its counteroffensive against Russian forces, according to several news reports that cite Biden administration officials.

• Ukraine has conducted nuclear disaster response drills in the vicinity of the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station, regional officials say.