Russia pursuing 'strategy of attrition' in Ukraine: UK official
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Burning and destroyed high-rise apartment buildings in Mariupol, Ukraine.
PHOTO: AFP/MAXAR TECHNOLOGIES
LONDON (AFP) - A senior UK defence official said Wednesday (March 23) that Russia was now waging a war of "attrition" in Ukraine, after numerous setbacks meant Moscow had "failed to achieve its original objectives".
Chief of Defence Intelligence Jim Hockenhull said Moscow had been surprised by both the scale and ferocity of Ukrainian resistance, while Russian forces had been "bedevilled with problems of its own making".
"Russian operations have changed," he told reporters at a briefing, adding the Kremlin was "now pursuing a strategy of attrition".
"This will involve the reckless and indiscriminate use of firepower (and) result in increased civilian casualties, destruction of Ukrainian infrastructure, and intensify the humanitarian crisis," Hockenhull warned.
Ukraine on Wednesday appealed for fresh Western military help on the eve of an emergency Nato summit and G7 gathering, as it continued to mount fierce resistance to Russia's invasion.
Western intelligence officials believe claims that Ukrainian forces have killed as many as 10,000 Russian troops are credible, and assess that six senior Russian officers have died in the conflict.
Hockenhull noted President Vladimir Putin has reinforced his control over Russia's domestic media to "control the narrative" and hide both operational problems and the high casualty numbers from the Russian people.
A Western official meanwhile told reporters Moscow was mobilising some reserve forces to mitigate the losses, but they were likely to be poorly equipped and suffer from lower morale compared to the professional units first dispatched to Ukraine.
The official said Putin's previously stated belief that Russian troops would welcomed in Ukraine as liberators was a "catastrophic miscalculation" that had "fundamentally flawed their ability to succeed".
"You've got this fatal flaw at the heart of the Russian plan which has led to all of these things coming together in the situation that we see the Russian forces in today," the official said.
