© KEYSTONE/EPA RUSSIAN DEFENCE MINISTRY PRESS S/RUSSIAN DEFENCE MINIS
Russia is recruiting Syrian mercenaries with experience in urban guerrilla warfare to fight in Ukraine, the Pentagon said Monday. Moscow has committed to Ukraine virtually all the combat forces massed in recent months on the Russian-Ukrainian border.
The Russian combat forces massed on the Russian-Ukrainian border are estimated by Washington at more than 150,000 soldiers. “It is interesting that [le président russe Vladimir] Putin finds himself resorting to foreign fighters,” US Department of Defense spokesman John Kirby said.
The Pentagon, however, does not have “perfect visibility” on who is being recruited to join the Russian offensive or how many of them, Kirby acknowledged. Russia has been involved in the Syrian conflict since 2015 alongside the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Chechnya strongman Ramzan Kadyrov, a former rebel turned Kremlin ally, has shared videos of Chechen fighters in Ukraine. He said some were killed in the fighting. On the other side of the front, tens of thousands of volunteers have come to Ukraine to join its forces, according to Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kouleba.
“Morale Issues”
Kyiv and Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, are still held by the Ukrainian government, while Russia has seized the port city of Kherson and stepped up its bombardment of urban centers across the country.
Other than advances in southern Ukraine, Russian forces “have not really made any noticeable progress in recent days,” spokesman Kirby said. According to the Pentagon, Moscow is stepping up bombardments, missiles and air strikes to make up for the lack of progress on the ground.
“We believe” that the Russian army “has problems with morale, supplies, fuel and food”, assured John Kirby, again referring to “strong Ukrainian resistance”.
He noted that the intensification of the bombings against several cities had “an increasingly significant impact on the human toll for civilians” by destroying homes, churches, hospitals and schools. “The result is that more civilians are killed and injured,” he said.
The concern now relates in particular to the fate of Odessa, a strategic port city on the shores of the Black Sea that the Russians are preparing to bombard, according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
“We think the Russians want to take Odessa,” said a senior Pentagon official, without ruling out a possible amphibious attack supported by ground troops. But Washington has “at this stage no indication of a possible movement” on this front, he added.