Russia increases missiles strikes but no ‘significant change on the ground’

The United States has seen “no appreciable movement” of Russian forces towards Ukraine’s capital of Kyiv since yesterday, though the Kremlin has increased its strikes on the city, a senior defense official said Wednesday.  

“We would assess that there essentially has been no appreciable movement closer to the city than what we briefed a couple of days ago,” the official told reporters. “Basically they remain stalled outside the city center.” 

Washington has also observed “an increase in missiles and artillery” targeting Kyiv’s infrastructure, with similar situations seen in Chernihiv to the north and Kharkiv to the northeast. 

“Both cities are continually under assault, but with no, again, appreciable movement by the Russians to take either one,” they said.  

The United States estimates that Russia has now sent into Ukraine 82 percent of the combat power it had staged outside the country prior to the invasion, which began last week.  

Those combat powers include a much watched 40-mile-long military convoy heading toward Kyiv, but the U.S. believes that movement is “stalled,” due to lack of fuel, food and fierce Ukrainian resistance, the official said. 

“They are not moving at any rate that would lead one to believe that they’ve solved their problems. So we would characterize it as stalled,” they said. “We have some indications that [Ukrainians] have also at places and at times tried to target this convoy.” 

In the south, Russian forces have made more headway.  

Kherson, where Russians have claimed they have taken control, is still “very much a contested city at this point,” the official said.  

There are also “preliminary indications” that Russian troops would attempt to move on the coastal city of Mariupol from the Donetsk region, with an advance “from multiple directions” to encircle the city.  

The official also said Russia has conducted “more than 450 missile launches,” since the assault started. The missiles are of “all stripes and sizes,” including “short-range, medium-range, surface air missiles, cruise missiles,” they added. 

The airspace over Ukraine, meanwhile, continues to remain contested, with both Ukrainian and Russian air and missile defense capabilities “intact and viable.”