A senior US defense official said on Tuesday that the number of Russian troops dropped for the first time to less than 90 percent of the 150,000 it had deposited on Ukraine’s border before the invasion.
The Russian military is struggling with communications, logistics and fuel, the official said, while some soldiers were evacuated after suffering frostbite because they lacked proper cold weather gear.
Russian and Ukrainian forces are engaged in fierce fighting, particularly near the strategically located port city of Mariupol, which Russia is now shelling from the Azov Sea, according to the official.
The Pentagon said on Tuesday that Ukraine’s military, however, is pushing to retake territory in some places, especially in the south near Kherson.
Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said: “We’ve seen signs that Ukrainians are now going a little bit further on the offense.”
According to a March 22 report by the Institute for the Study of War, Russia’s forces were heading towards a “prolonged bombardment phase” of Ukrainian cities, possibly due to the failure of their initial campaign to encircle and seize Kyiv and other major cities. Is.
The chief of Ukraine’s armed forces specified for the first time on Tuesday that the Russian military was “causing casualties due to poor medical supply systems and drug shortages”, the ISW reported in its report. Additionally, the military leader also claimed that some unspecified Russian units “have no stockpile of food and ammunition for more than three days”, according to ISW.
The US assessment could not be independently verified.
