Russia Has Committed One Third of the Assembled BTGs so Far
Majority of forces still outside the battle
Russia has only deployed around one-third of its amassed forces into Ukraine, a senior U.S. defense official said in a briefing to reporters on Friday, underscoring the risk of a significant escalation as Russian troops enter the outskirts of the capital, Kyiv.
Though the official did not provide the evidence behind the U.S. intelligence finding, it comes as Ukrainian forces and civilians are preparing to fight a pitched battle to repel Russian forces from the capital city
Military experts say there are a number of possible reasons why Russia hasn’t deployed the full brunt of its force into Ukraine.
The invading forces have so far largely relied on traveling by road, as opposed to plowing across the Ukrainian countryside, creating a natural bottleneck. “You can only send so many forces in at a time,” said Rob Lee, a fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute who previously served in the U.S. Marine Corps.
Lee also said the Russians are likely holding forces in reserve in case they encounter pockets of fierce resistance but that there has been little evidence that Russia has been truly routed at any point in its campaign.
The U.S. Defense Department estimates Russia has fired over 200 missiles into Ukraine since the war began early Thursday morning local time, and Russian forces have already reached Kyiv. Yet analysts stressed that the war is still in its very early stages.
“I think they’re assessing in the first 48 hours what they sense the Ukrainian resistance is, where they plan to reinforce units, and how the initial axis of attack is doing, to decide where to allocate their forces,” said Michael Kofman, an expert on the Russian military with the think tank CNA.
In Kyiv and Kharkiv, Ukraine’s two largest cities, families are sleeping in subway stations as improvised bomb shelters as Russian missiles have struck military targets around both cities.
In a briefing on Friday, Ukrainian Ambassador to the United States Oksana Markarova said Russian forces had struck a number of civilian sites in Ukraine, including ambulances and an orphanage in the village of Vorzel with 50 children in it, although none were injured in the attack. As the war unfolds, there is little independent data on civilian and military casualties.
Markarova said the country’s prosecutor general is gathering evidence for any future international tribunals. According to Human Rights Watch, a cluster munition struck outside a hospital in the Donetsk region, killing four people.
While civilian targets have been struck, analysts said the Russians have not pursued a strategy of indiscriminate bombing. “It’s pretty clear that the goal of this operation has been to minimize civilian casualties,” Lee said. He said this suggests the Russians may be seeking to minimize resentment among Ukrainians in the event that they seek to install a puppet government after ousting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. “It’s all about Kyiv, it’s all about Zelensky,” he said of Russia’s goal.
But things could easily get worse. Experts said Russia has already moved multiple rocket launch systems, which can saturate battlefields with thousands of rockets, to the outskirts of major Ukrainian cities.
“I am concerned there is a high rate of expenditure of their precision-guided munitions,” said Dara Massicot, a senior policy researcher at the Rand Corp. who studies Russian military capabilities. “Once those are expended they will rely on guided bombs that have been shown to be highly inaccurate.”
Source: Foreign Policy
“Though the official did not provide the evidence behind the U.S. intelligence finding…”
Firstly they have NO evidence and no one with a working brain cell would trust any thing that “US intelligence” comes up with.
“He said this suggests the Russians may be seeking to minimize resentment among Ukrainians in the event that they seek to install a puppet government after ousting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.” The Yanks and NATO are pissed because they will lose the second of their own two puppet governments since their coup in 2014!
This whole incident is the result of the US of Israel, once again, interfering in another countries affairs, creating havoc, then just leaving the country in ruins. Just the usual scenario.
The western MSM and the unnamed US “officials” will continue to lie and obfuscate about the situation in a vain attempt to portray Russia as the bad guy.
Our “officials” in the USA are war criminals who need jail or execution.
“It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world; so far, I mean, as we are now at liberty to do it;
I hold the maxim no less applicable to public than to private affairs, that honesty is always the best policy.
The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible.”
I am infinitely more interested in holding those accountable for the Covidian schemes lately deployed against us, than in European conflicts that are a matter for Europeans, however it is necessary to note that the ‘Usual Suspect’ Neolib/Neocon machinations are the causation of this outbreak of death and destruction – once again.
This scheme of mass murder in furtherance of regime change, is a direct result of the attempt to push a military alliance, that has long outlived any benefit to Americans, onto a foreign state, in direct refutation of America’s founding foreign policy.
Solzhenitsyn is oft quoted for his motto of – “Let the lie come into the world, let it even triumph. But not through me.” This obligates all of us to tell the truth or face individual culpability for that evil. Anyone deviating from Washington’s principles is certainly promoting something, but it is not an American foreign policy, nor is it designed to benefit the American people. It is instead designed to subjugate them to other interests.
The Globalist faction and its web of Multinational Corporate, Global Finance and Schwabian Bureaucrats are easily recognizable because they have not only contempt for the Foreign Relations principle established by General Washington,but evince an utter hostility to his other principles such as wise fiscal restraint – “avoiding likewise the accumulation of debt” –
which has now fully buried US currency and our financial system, under the management of this Globalist faction, who are now driving toward a Uni-Polar world government under the control of this array of malevolent actors.
Diplomats are mere functionaries who interface with existing foreign leaders, they do not work to overthrow or stock/staff the govt’s of foreign states. The reason that the Nuland-ites were so eager to act in the later capacity has a lot to do with her status at Center for a New American Security and similar interlocking entities, funded by the largess heaped on her by every major ‘Defense’ manufacturer as well as interests heavily involved in the Covidian Schemes against us.
This insane ideological ‘Neo-Chameleon’ policy, which gave Manpads to Osama Bin Laden and which imported the murderous Tsarnaev Brothers as ‘refugees’ (while Russia warned the USA of the danger that they presented), and who left Americans to face the death and destruction of these Globalist-funded muppets, will never stop this attack on us voluntarily.
Before you can mount a defense, you have to have some working knowledge of your enemy, and that enemy is not Russia.
Is Vladimir now calling on Chechen (antient slavs) freedom-fighters to liberate Galicia from its inhabitants ?
They are not battle-field soldiers, they are killers. can only be for the purpose of exterminating the resident population that wants none of the blessings of Mother Russia and Pan-Slav brotherhood.
Just as Katherine, the German countessa and great sex-machine, celebrated by killing 20,000 peasants when she conquered parts of Ukraine. For some very good reason, in the past 1,000 years, not one person in the Kiev Russ wanted to be part of Mother Russia; the Moscuvites always had to force themselves (and their brotherhood) upon them.
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I watched some footage taken at the Kiev Railway Station. And what do I see, a nigger waiting for a train ! Those children of Banderka are not doing a good job keeping their homeland clean. They should have long ago, shipped the infestation to Luka the subhuman Shenko, he and his family need cultural enrichment badly.
false the Chechens will meet the Azov Batallion and wipe them off history, the lilltle nazi scum!
That would just mean that the Azov Brigade have proven to be too tough for the Slav Freedom-Fighters, and Grand-Protector Putin had to resort to bringing in Chechen rent-a-killers (who a few years ago gave the Russian Army a “no end of a lesson”
Been kinda wondering, what ca. 180.000 sitting still in Belarus are up to…