3.25.22
A month into its invasion, Russia appears to be reducing its war aims from capturing all of Ukraine to merely holding the Donbass region–which a top Russian military officer said Friday was the goal from the start, but which Pentagon said may be a result of Russia’s intelligence failures. "Our forces and equipment will focus on the most important thing, the complete liberation of Donbass,” Russian General Staff head of military operations Sergei Rudskoi said at a Friday briefing in Moscow, as reported by Interfax. Rudskoi said the month-long invasion had completed its first phase and achieved its purpose: keeping Ukraine from retaking the separatist-controlled Donbass territories. Rudskoi claimed the attacks on Kyiv and outlying cities were done only to keep Ukraine from being able to send troops or defenses to Donbass. A senior U.S. defense official told reporters on Friday that Pentagon leaders have a different assessment of the situation: that intelligence, command and control, and logistics failures were taking their toll and potentially forcing Russia to reconsider its objectives.
On the ground, the official said, the Russians were facing “significant command and control problems, both in terms of an individual leader’s ability to command troops in his field but also the ability of commanders to speak to one another.” Russia appears to be concentrating its forces on eastern Ukraine, the official said. “At least for the moment, they don't appear to want to pursue Kyiv as aggressively, or frankly at all. They are focused on the Donbass,” the official said.
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