British MoD has revealed Russian units are retreating to the border after suffering huge losses.
British Defense Ministry said in an update that Putin’s units are suffering “heavy losses” in Ukraine have been forced to return to Belarus and Russia to “reorganize and resupply” as logistical problems continue to plague Moscow’s offensive.
The Defense Ministry posted on Twitter saying: “Russian units suffering heavy losses have been forced to return to Belarus and Russia to reorganize and resupply.”
“Such activity is placing further pressure on Russia’s already strained logistics and demonstrates the difficulties Russia is having reorganizing its units in forward areas within Ukraine,” the post added.
The defense ministry also warned that Russia will likely make up for the reduced mobility with mass artillery and missile strikes, something which could increase the risk of civilian casualties in Ukrainian cities which have already endured weeks of shelling.
The defense ministry said Russia’s new stated focus on Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region, where the separatist regions of Donetsk and Luhansk are located, is likely a “tacit admission that it is struggling to sustain more than one significant axis of advance.”
Late Tuesday, the agency said repeated setbacks and successful counterattacks by Ukrainian forces mean it is “almost certain” that Russia has failed to encircle Kyiv, and troop movements away from the area could indicate acceptance it has “lost the initiative” in the region.
The latest defense assessment came as Deputy Prime Minister Dominic Raab said there was “obviously skepticism” about Moscow’s pledge to scale back some military operations around Ukraine’s capital Kyiv.
Deputy Prime Minister Raab told Sky News: “We judge the Russian military machine by its actions, not its words. There is obviously skepticism that it will regroup to attack again. The door to diplomacy will always be left ajar but I don’t think you can trust what is coming out of the mouth of Putin’s war machine.”
He said that reports that Russia was planning to deploy mercenaries from the Wagner Group and from Syria could be a sign of Russian weakness.
Pentagon says that it did not believe a claim made by Moscow that its troops would be reducing military activity near the cities of Chernihiv and Kyiv, saying that Russia was instead “repositioning” its troops.
John Kirby, Pentagon press secretary, said: “We ought not to be fooling – and nobody should be fooling ourselves by the Kremlin’s now recent claim that it will suddenly reduce military attacks near Kyiv or any reports that it’s going to withdraw all of its forces.”
“We believe this is a repositioning, not a real withdrawal, and that we all should be prepared to watch for a major offensive against other areas of Ukraine. It does not mean the threat to Kyiv is over,” Kirby noted.
The Russian invasion is now in its second month and some reports suggest that more than 10,000 Russian soldiers have died since the invasion started on February 24, with some of them in their late teens.
Thousands, if not tens of thousands, of civilians, have died since the invasion as well as many Ukrainian soldiers and Russian troops has still remained unsuccessful at seizing Kyiv. The Pentagon told reporters last week that the first Ukrainian city that was taken by Russia was no longer controlled by its forces.
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