Russia has not yet fully taken control of Ukrainian airspace, the senior US official told reporters on condition of anonymity.
“Ukraine’s air defense is still functioning, although it has been damaged by Russian airstrikes,” he said. “They still have anti-missile defense and (…) they still have planes which deny access (to Ukrainian airspace) to Russian planes”.
In addition, the “command and control” capabilities of the Ukrainian army, which allow the coordination of military operations at the highest level, “are intact”, he noted.
“We believe that over the past 24 hours…the Russians have lost some of their momentum,” the senior official said. “They’re meeting more resistance than they expected.”
“They are not advancing as far or as fast as we think they expected,” he added, noting that the Russian military did not yet control any Ukrainian urban centers.
“We have information about what they thought they could do,” he said. “And we continue to have information that it’s not quite going the way they planned.”
The Pentagon official, however, pointed out that Russia has deployed in Ukraine only a third of the forces it has amassed in recent weeks on the country’s borders, and that Moscow’s objective of seizing Kiev to install a pro regime there -Russian had not changed.
“The situation could change. It could change very quickly,” he said. “They have a lot of firepower at their disposal.”
Russia has so far advanced into Ukrainian territory along three axes: south from Crimea to the city of Kherson, across the Dnieper, north from Belarus to Kiev, along two routes to the northeast and northwest of the Ukrainian capital, and east from the Russian city of Belgorod to the major industrial city of Kharkiv, according to Pentagon estimates.
Although Russian forces have reached the outskirts of Kiev, they have yet to reach the city center. In addition, the city of Kharkiv has not fallen to the Russian army, and intense fighting continues in this area, the official said.
In the south, the offensive against Kherson continues, but it has widened to the west, with the landing of several thousand Russian soldiers from the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea, towards the city of Mariupol , according to the Pentagon.
Russian forces are also trying to take control of the important Kakhovka power plant, northwest of Kherson, where fighting is ongoing. Moscow also launched a cyberattack against this plant in an attempt to take control of it.