Ukrainian forces are attacking the 40-mile-long convoy that is attempting to converge on the capital city of Kyiv, the chief of the Defense Intelligence of Ukraine said.
“We are striking the enemy’s columns,” Brig. Gen. Kyrylo Budanov told Military Times on Wednesday. “We burn many columns of the enemy.”
“My intelligence officers and agents are directing and calling the strikes,” he said, adding that the forces are using Su-24 and Su-25 fighter jets, artillery, and missile barrages against Russian forces and equipment.
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The convoy of Russian troops was roughly 15 miles from Kyiv, a senior defense official told reporters on Monday, and little had changed in that regard on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Russian troops specifically aiming to gain control of Kyiv, which includes the convoy, have been “stalled” as they face more resistance than they anticipated, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby told reporters during Wednesday’s briefing.
The defense official on Wednesday noted they had indications that Ukrainian forces are targeting the convoy in an attempt to prevent Kyiv’s falling.
“We’ve seen indications that at times and at certain places, the convoys may have been resisted by Ukrainian forces, and I think I have to leave it at that,” the official said. “But we’ve seen indications that we are in no position to refute [Ukraine claims they have hit the convoy].”
But Kirby noted that after their setback, the Pentagon officials “believe the Russians are deliberately, actually, regrouping themselves, and reassessing the progress that they have not made, and how to make up the lost time,” however he also said these troops “have experienced logistics and sustainment challenges, challenges that we don’t believe they have fully anticipated.”
Some Russian units are surrendering “sometimes without a fight,” while others are made up of conscripts who have “never been in combat” and “weren’t even told they were going to be in combat,” the official continued. In some instances, Russian troops have punched holes in their vehicles’ gas tanks, presumably to avoid getting into combat situations.
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Former Pentagon staff specialist Trent Telenko provided a new possible explanation for the slowed convoy — flat tires. He said in a lengthy social media thread that leaving “military truck tires in one place for months on end” is problematic because “the sidewalls get brittle in the sun and fail like the tires on the Pantsir-SR.”
