The United States has “not seen indications” that Russia is preparing to move additional forces into Ukraine beyond what the Kremlin amassed near the border prior to the invasion, a senior defense official said Monday.
Russia has sent into Ukraine “nearly 100 percent” of the more than 150,000 troops and equipment placed near its borders in Russia and Belarus. But beyond that, Washington has “not seen indications that they are preparing to move additional battalion tactical groups from elsewhere in the country to shore up what they’ve put into Ukraine,” the official told reporters.
“We have not seen any indication that [Russian President Vladimir Putin] is going to go beyond the amassed combat power that he had already developed.”
The findings are noteworthy as they could indicate an unwillingness to sacrifice more Russian troops in the conflict, which has seen the Kremlin bogged down with supply issues and fierce opposition from Ukrainian forces.
That line of thinking is further bolstered by Russia’s move to recruit Syrian fighters to help in the fight, a development first reported Sunday by The Wall Street Journal and confirmed by the official on Monday.
The U.S. military is “not seeing a lot of progress” by Russian forces, who “continue to be frustrated by a stiff Ukrainian resistance, as well as their own internal challenges,” the official said.
Russia is, however, “increasing bombardments” of major Ukrainian cities including Kyiv, Kharkiv, Chernihiv, Mykolaiv and the southern port of Mariupol, and has launched more than 625 missiles against Ukraine since the incursion started 12 days ago.
“We certainly have noticed increases in what we call long-range fires … bombardment, rocket attacks, artillery, as well as missile strikes, and we do assess that these strikes are hitting civilian targets, civilian infrastructure, residential areas,” the official said.
The strikes are “happening on a greater rate and a greater scale,” likely 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.”
They added that it’s “not clear” if Kremlin forces are hitting the civilian targets on purpose or if they are the “result of imprecision,” and warned that Putin still “has an awful lot of combat power available to him.”
As of Sunday, roughly 1,735,000 refugees had fled Ukraine to seek shelter in a number of surrounding countries, according to the United Nations.
At least 406 civilians have been killed and 801 others have been injured since the start of the war, the U.N. said Monday.