Russian forces have not made “appreciable” progress toward Ukraine’s capital city of Kyiv in “two to three days,” a senior defense official said Thursday.
The forces, which Pentagon spokesman John Kirby described a day earlier as “stalled,” have been “flummoxed and they have been frustrated,” the official told reporters.
“As for the last time we saw them make appreciable [gains], it’s probably been two to three days before the last time that we thought that they made any major geographical distance toward Kyiv,” the official continued, noting that Russian forces remain roughly 15 miles from the city and they’re primarily coming from the northern and northwestern regions of the city.
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The Russian troops heading toward Kyiv “have been surprised by the stiff resistance that they are facing by the Ukrainians,” Kirby added. The defense official said earlier this week the troops are experiencing shortages of fuel and food and that many are conscripts who have “never been in combat” and “weren’t even told they were going to be in combat.”
In some instances, Russian troops have punched holes in their vehicles’ gas tanks, presumably to avoid getting into combat situations.
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,” Kirby explained. However, he also said these troops have “have experienced logistics and sustainment challenges, challenges that we don’t believe they have fully anticipated.”
Even as they’re trying to regroup, the official said the Pentagon believes “they’re trying every single day” to move in on Kyiv.
The Russians have had better success in the eastern and southern parts of Ukraine, both of which are much closer to Russia and Crimea, respectively, making refueling much easier.
“They launched these offenses in the south out of Crimea, where they have been occupying for eight years. So they have infrastructure there. They already had a not insignificant force presence in Crimea to draw from, as well as infrastructure and sustainment capability down there,” the defense official said. “It’s been more refined than the expeditionary kind of sustainment they had to put in place in the north.”
There’s been an increased bombardment of Kharkiv, a city in the northeast part of the country, and Russian forces “now appear to be just outside the city,” the defense official said, adding that the Russian troops have made “some progress” closing in on the city. Kharkiv is near the Donetsk and Luhansk region, also known as Donbas, a contested region of Ukraine where Russian separatists have fought for Russian interests.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s recognition of these two regions as independent came just days before the invasion and was seen as an escalation in the conflict.
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On Wednesday, Russian forces captured the strategically important port city of Kherson near the Black Sea, making it the first major Ukrainian city to fall. However, the Pentagon could not verify who has control over the city.
Russian forces are trying to “isolate” Mariupol, a city along the Sea of Azov in the southeastern part of the country, from Ukraine with troops heading from both north and from slightly south along the coast near the town of Berdiansk. The official also noted they were not aware of any Russian naval activity near Odesa, a southern port city that sits along the Black Sea.
