Top U.S. military officer: Ukraine conflict will likely last years

Chairman of the Joints Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley.

(Image credit: Eric Lee/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

published 6 April 2022

Chairman of the Joints Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley on Tuesday said he believes the conflict in Ukraine is "very protracted" and will last for years.

Milley, the highest ranking military official in the United States, testified before the House Armed Services Committee, his first appearance since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in late February. He shared that he expects "NATO, the United States, Ukraine, and all of the allies and partners supporting Ukraine will be involved in this for quite some time." It might not be a decade, he said, but the conflict will be "measured in years."

There are about 100,000 U.S. troops now stationed in Europe, the highest number since 2005, CBS News reports. Milley said because of the situation in Ukraine, he expects an increased U.S. presence in the region for some time. "My advice would be to create permanent bases but don't permanently station, so you get the effect of permanence by rotational forces cycling through permanent bases," he said.

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.