Marine Corps Commandant General David Berger celebrated the Ukrainian military’s continued ability to hold out against the Russian onslaught in Bakhmut, where Ukrainian forces have been outmanned and outgunned for months.
Berger noted that Ukraine has “basically gotten most of the world on their side and kept them there—and their own people.”
“This battle in Bakhmut, which you and I are watching: two months ago it seemed like they were never going to be able to hold out and they should just fall back,” he said. “Their ability to adapt to the fight they have encountered there is masterful.”
The top Marine made the comments yesterday at a wide-ranging session with the Economic Club of New York, where he discussed the war in Ukraine, the threat from China, his plan to overhaul the Marine Corps, and other topics.
The battle over Bakhmut, a city in Ukraine’s Donetsk region that’s effectively been razed to the ground, has been fiercely contested on the battlefield — and online, as Kyiv and Moscow duel to each sell its narrative about the fighting there to the world.
After Russia’s Wagner Group mercenary organization claimed that Russian forces control over 80 percent of the area surrounding the city, Ukrainian commanders swatted down that figure, saying that Kyiv’s forces “control a considerably larger percent of Bakhmut’s territory.”
But although Ukraine’s defense of the city has held for several months, Russian and Wagner forces are still heavily contesting it. U.S. intelligence assessments released as part of a broader intelligence leak detailed the worsening situation for Ukraine’s military around Bakhmut in recent months. “Ukrainian forces as of 25 February were almost operationally encircled by Russian forces in Bakhmut,” one of the documents states, according to the New York Times.
The top Marine commander went on to say that while “two or three years, you could have probably filled this room with people who said that NATO is old, that it’s a tired thing, it’s a leftover from World War II,” the war has revived the alliance. He cited the membership bids by Sweden and Finland.
“I think it, one, reinvigorates and restores some people’s faith in what alliances mean. That alliance is strong, Article Five is a pretty big lever to pull,” he said. “What does it all mean? I think a rejuvenation of NATO, number one, as an organization.”
In his remarks, Berger also spoke to the war’s transition to “the past several months a World War I-style grind of one force against another, where it’s a matter of yards and feet.” He also addressed China’s release of a 12-point peace plan for the conflict: “That, of course, has NATO taking great attention to why is China now involved in Europe.”