The 64 km-long Russian military column seen in earlier satellite pictures has not made significant progress towards the capital city Kyiv over the past 24 hours, intelligence inputs from the US and UK suggest. According to a senior US defense official, there could be multiple motives behind the change in Russian posture.
“I can’t give you an accurate hour-to-hour perception of how many miles they’re making over groundbut we don’t believe that it is making a lot of progress”, the US official told reporters in a background briefing, citing intelligence inputs.
The latest intelligence assessment released earlier on Wednesday, by another agency, The UK’s ministry of defence, competed with the assessment of US officials. “While Russian forces have reportedly moved into the center of Kherson in the south, overall gains across axes have been limited in the past 24 hours. This is probably due to a combination of ongoing logistic difficulties and strong Ukrainian resistance”, the UK ministry of defense said.
The Pentagon suspects several possible reasons, including but not limited to shortage of supplies, possible regrouping of forces, risk averseness on part of the Russian leadership etc.
“My usual caveat applies here, that it’s dynamic and they will regroup, they will adjust, they will change their tactics,” the senior US official explained. Pointing towards evidence of a certain risk-averse behavior by the Russian military, the official added that there are indications that the Russian leadership is making its moves while ensuring to face minimum losses or captures.
The official highlighted the pattern seen in the other part of Ukraine where Russian troops were kept in an uncontested environment. “When I say risk averse, I mean risks to their own force take the amphibious assault, for instance — they put those troops ashore a good 70 kilometers away from Mariupol because they knew Mariupol was going to be defended and they could put them ashore in an uncontested environment. And they still haven’t reached Mariupol”.
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The US suspects that Russia could look to target Ukrainian government infrastructures in Kyiv, using missiles, before approaching for the final assault on the ground. UK and US intelligence assessments have been indicating a shortage of supplies for the past few days. “What we’re seeing are columns that are literally out of gas, and as I said earlier, now they’re starting to run out of food for their troops,” US official said.
Military experts in India said that this could also be an elaborate preparation for the siege of the capital that could take weeks to unfold. “The siege of Kyiv in 1941 took exactly a month and there were almost 500,000 casualties during that siege”, Air Vice Marshal (retired) A Subramanian told India Today TV. Speaking about the Russian convoy seen in the satellite images, Lt Gen Syed Ata Hasnain (Retd) said “I would put that as strength of approximately 900 air-vehicles, 3 armored divisions, which is a very large sized force coming towards Kyiv.
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Primarily what happens in these operations is, they will go for the isolation of large built-up area, the intention is to make sure that no one comes in, no reinforcements come in, after that they will start putting the squeeze”.
The US theory also points towards a possible Russian recalibration before the final siege of the Ukrainian capital. “We also think that just in general, not with the convoy, but just in general that one reason why things appear to be stalled north of Kyiv is that the Russians themselves are regrouping and rethinking and trying to adjust to the challenges that they’ve had”, the official added. Earlier, Russian army asked civilians to freely leave the city. “All civilians in the city can freely leave the Ukrainian capital along the Kyiv-Vasylkiv highway. This direction is open and safe,” Russian defense ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said.
In southern Ukraine, Russian troops have made more progress, where Russian forces earlier breached the boundaries from Crimea it. US assessments indicate that these troops are moving in two parts towards the northwest and the northeast. In the northwest, intense bombings and clashes continue and it is unclear who actually controls Kherson. In the northeast, Russian troops are still outside Mariupol and could attack Mariupol with long-range fires.
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