US defense official: Russians ‘meeting more resistance’ than they expected

Russian forces moving toward Ukraine’s capital city of Kyiv are “meeting more resistance than they expected,” a senior defense official said Friday.   

“I can’t give you an exact geographic location of where they are, but they are not moving on Kyiv as fast as what we believe they anticipated they would be able to do,” the official told reporters. 

“In general, the Russians have lost a little bit of their momentum,” the official later added. 

The official said Russian troops haven’t taken any population centers and Russia does not have air superiority over Ukraine, as “Ukrainian air defenses are still working” and the country still has air and missile defenses. 

Russia is continuing to advance into three major areas of Ukraine since beginning an assault on the country early Thursday morning local time. Russian troops are advancing toward Kyiv from Belarus; into the area around Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city; and from Crimea in the south toward Kherson, which sits on a major river, the official said.  

Russian forces moving toward Kherson have also appeared to split off to head to the northeast “in the direction of Mariupol and the Donbas region,” the official added. 

The U.S. assessed Russian forces have fired more than 200 missiles into Ukraine since the start of the invasion.

Most of the projectiles fired are short-range ballistic missiles but include a mix of medium-range and cruise missiles as well, the official said. 

“Some of these missiles we have assessed have impacted civilian residential areas,” but the death toll is unknown, they said. 

“I cannot tell you at this time what the casualties are, and I cannot tell you at this time whether those civilian residential areas were deliberately targeted. All I can tell you is we have seen that they have been impacted by some of these missiles.” 

The official also confirmed that there is a Russian “amphibious assault” underway to the west of Mariupol along the Ukrainian coast. The assault is coming from the Sea of Azov, with indications that the Russians “are putting potentially thousands of naval infantry ashore there.” 

The general assumption “is they are going to move towards the northeast, towards Mariupol and the Donbas region,” they said. 

Of the total Russian forces amassed near Ukraine ahead of the invasion, Moscow has used “about a third of their combat power” as of Friday, the official said. 

“That does not mean that they will not commit more, I’m just giving you a snapshot of what we’re seeing right now,” they added.