Russian President Vladimir Putin has now committed nearly all the forces he had amassed on the borders of Ukraine in the lead-up to Russia’s invasion, but a lack of advance on the ground in recent days has led to increased bombardment of several Ukrainian cities from the air.
Beyond southern areas of Ukraine, the Russian troops have not made “a lot of progress, at least over the course of the last couple of days,” a senior U.S. defense official told reporters on background Monday. Even so, Russia has now launched more than 625 missiles at Ukraine – with cities such as Kharkiv and the capital of Kyiv getting hit especially hard, according to the Pentagon.
“It appears as though the Russians are increasing their use of long-range fires to supplement or to make up for the lack of ground movements that they have had and the lack of air superiority that they don't enjoy,” the official added, noting that the air space above Ukraine is still contested.
The Russian troops are “frustrated by a stiff Ukrainian resistance as well as their own internal challenges,” the official said Monday, while cautioning that beyond his pre-staged personnel Putin “has an awful lot of combat power available to him” in total military capability superior to Ukraine’s. The official also confirmed reports that Russians are trying to recruit Syrians to “sign up and fight in Ukraine.”
“We find that noteworthy, that [Putin] believes that he needs to rely on foreign fighters to supplement what is a very significant commitment of combat power inside Ukraine as it is,” the official said.
The official added that the U.S. has “anecdotal reports that, at places and at times, the Russians have not recovered their dead” troops in Ukraine. Officials in Ukraine have claimed to have killed thousands of Russian forces, and reports that lost troops are being left on the battlefield will likely only add to the backlash Putin is facing at home.
Meanwhile, President Joe Biden is weighing other ways to hurt Putin financially and further isolate Russia. The president held a secure call with the leaders of France, Germany and the United Kingdom on Monday where the allies “underscored their commitment to continue providing security, economic and humanitarian assistance to Ukraine,” according to a White House readout that provided few other details. Reports indicate that the U.S. is considering a ban on Russian oil, but the readout did not address that possibility. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin did deploy roughly 500 U.S. military personnel to locations in Europe “to augment existing forces that are there,” according to the senior defense official. The official added, however, that “nothing has changed about President Biden's very clear direction that we will not be putting U.S. troops in Ukraine.”
Russian and Ukrainian officials met for a third round of diplomatic talks on Monday, but little progress was found beyond “some positive results in terms of logistics of humanitarian corridors,” according to translated comments by Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Progress on the humanitarian corridors is crucial after the U.N. Refugee Agency announced on Monday that 1.7 million people had fled Ukraine in 11 days – the “fastest growing refugee crisis in Europe since World War II.” The senior defense official said Monday that it is clear Putin is “creating a flow of refugees.”
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