Russian combat power now under 90% of pre-invasion levels: US official

WASHINGTON • A senior United States defence official said on Tuesday that Russia's combat power in Ukraine has declined below 90 per cent of its pre-invasion levels for the first time since its attack began, suggesting heavy losses of weaponry and growing casualties.

The US has estimated Russia assembled more than 150,000 troops around Ukraine before the Feb 24 invasion, along with enough aircraft, artillery, tanks and other firepower for its full-scale attack. "For the first time they may be just a little bit below 90 per cent," the US defence official told reporters on condition of anonymity. The official did not provide evidence.

Nearly a month into the war, Russian troops have failed to capture a single major city and their advance has been halted on nearly all fronts by Ukrainian forces. Moscow has instead turned to bombarding cities with artillery, missiles and bombs. Russia denies targeting civilians.

Much of that bombardment has been focused on the south-eastern city of Mariupol.

The senior US official said Russian naval forces have likely been firing into Mariupol from the Sea of Azov over the past 24 hours.

"That wasn't the case yesterday," the official said.

At the United Nations, Russia, the United States and Britain traded accusations on Tuesday over the possibility of a chemical weapons attack in Ukraine, but none produced any evidence to back their concerns.

The comments were made by diplomats to reporters after Russia raised the issue of an ammonia leak in Ukraine's besieged north-eastern city of Sumy - blaming "Ukrainian radical nationalist groups" - during a closed-door UN Security Council meeting. The accusation was rejected by Britain and the United States.

Russia's ambassador to the UN Dmitry Polyanskiy said Russian troops "have never planned or carried out strikes against any Ukrainian facilities where toxic substances are stored or produced".

"It is clear that the Ukrainian nationalist authorities, encouraged by the Western countries will stop at nothing to intimidate its own people and stage false flag attacks to accuse Russia," Mr Polyanskiy said.

It was the third time Russia has raised the issue of biological or chemical weapons since it began what it calls a "special military operation" to "demilitarise" Ukraine. The West and Ukraine reject that as a false pretext to invade a democratic country.

"It's hard not to conclude - given their record in the UK, in Russia against Alexei Navalny, given what we've seen in Syria - that this might well be a prelude to the Russians themselves creating some sort of false flag chemical weapons attack," Britain's UN ambassador Barbara Woodward told reporters.

US ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield dismissed Russia's accusations as "ludicrous".

Russia has meanwhile withdrawn most of its helicopters from a strategic airport in Kherson, according to satellite images analysed by The New York Times, in what experts said could be a telltale sign of Russian military setbacks in the south of the country. The removal of the equipment from the airport, evidenced by images captured by the space imaging company Planet Labs over six days, comes as the Ukrainian army is pressing to retake lost territory in the Kherson region.

Kherson, a shipbuilding centre east of Odessa on the Black Sea, was the first major city to be overwhelmed by Russian forces in the early days of the war. But Russia has failed to overtake the region as a whole.

Control over Kherson is essential to any effort to dominate the south broadly. The region, which lies just north of the Russian-controlled Crimean peninsula, stretches from the Black Sea coastline to the mouth of the Dnieper River.

Last week, Ukrainian forces attacked the Kherson airport, inflicting considerable damage to Russian equipment, which was clearly visible in satellite images and video of the aftermath. An image taken on Monday showed that previously visible aircraft had been removed, although Russian ground troops appear to still control the airport.

"The Ukrainian attack itself shows the vulnerability of the position, and the Russians may have decided that it's unwise to keep expensive aircraft parked there," Mr Frederick Kagan, the director of the Critical Threats project at the American Enterprise Institute, wrote in an e-mail.

NYTIMES, REUTERS