Russians said to be taking up defensive positions

WASHINGTON/LONDON • The Russian army has retreated more than 30km east of Kyiv and has begun to establish defensive positions on several fronts in Ukraine, a senior Pentagon official has said.

"The Ukrainians have managed to push the Russians back 55km east and north-east of Kyiv," the senior official, who requested anonymity, said on Wednesday.

A day earlier, the Pentagon had estimated that Russian forces were around 20km from the centre of the capital. To the north-west, "they're basically digging in and they are establishing defensive positions", the official added.

Moscow's indiscriminate attacks have devastated several Ukrainian cities since it sent tens of thousands of troops into its eastern European neighbour on Feb 24, with the civilian toll soaring and more than 10 million people fleeing their homes.

Many analysts still see no clear path out of the conflict. Even so, Ukraine's resistance - backed by Western military aid - has been unexpectedly fierce.

Russian forces also remain blocked 10km from the centre of Chernihiv, north-east of Kiev, according to Pentagon estimates.

They are "stalled" and, in some places, "they are ceding ground, they are actually moving in the opposite direction, but not by much", the official noted.

In Kharkiv in the east, where fighting remains intense, Russian forces are still 15km to 20km from the city centre and face "very, very stiff resistance" from the Ukrainians, said the official.

The Russians appear to be focusing on the pro-Russian separatist regions of Donetsk and Luhansk in the east. The official said the Pentagon believes Moscow is "at least to some degree trying to fix Ukrainian forces" in that area "so that they can't be used elsewhere".

To the south, however, the Russian navy is using the port of Berdyansk on the Sea of Azov for refuelling.

The Pentagon has seen no change around the southern port city of Odessa, on the Black Sea. While several missiles were fired in the direction of Odessa from Russian ships earlier this week, this did not happen on Tuesday or Wednesday, the official said.

The comments come a day after Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said the Ukrainians are "in places and at times going on an offensive", and are "going after Russians and pushing them out of places".

Meanwhile, a senior British defence official said on Wednesday that Russia is now waging a war of "attrition" in Ukraine, after numerous setbacks.

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 (their) own making". "Russian operations have changed," he said, adding that the Kremlin is "now pursuing a strategy of attrition".

He warned: "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."

Ukraine on Wednesday appealed for fresh Western military help on the eve of an emergency summit by the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and a Group of Seven gathering, as it continued to mount fierce resistance to Russia's invasion.

Western intelligence officials believe the 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.

Lieutenant-General Hockenhull noted that Russian President Vladimir Putin has reinforced his control over his country'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 that Moscow was mobilising some reserve forces to mitigate the losses, but they were likely to be poorly equipped and suffer from lower morale compared with the professional units first dispatched to Ukraine.

The official said Mr Putin's previously stated belief that Russian troops would be 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.

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE