WASHINGTON, April 11 – The United States believes Russia has started to reinforce and resupply its troops in Donbass in eastern Ukraine, a senior US defense official said on Monday.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Monday thousands of Russian troops were massing for a new offensive in the east, and Russia said it would not halt its military operation in Ukraine pending further peace talks. Continue reading
Despite resupply efforts in the Donbas, the United States did not believe this was the start of a new offensive in the region, the official said on condition of anonymity.
“We believe this is an attempt to reinforce and resupply their forces in Donbass, they are still north of Izyum,” the official told reporters, referring to a town about 180 km (112 miles) north of the city Donetsk.
The Russian vehicles sent to the region included command and control elements and support personnel for aircraft and infantry units, the official said.
Last week Russia completed its withdrawal from the Kyiv area and sent some troops to Belarus for refitting and supplies.
The official said there was evidence some of those troops were moving east in Belarus.
Russia still had the vast majority of its tactical battalion groups in Ukraine, including more than 55 groups in the south.
The Russian Defense Ministry said that Russian missiles from the sea on Sunday destroyed S-300 anti-aircraft missile systems delivered to Ukraine by a European country.
The official said the United States saw an airstrike on Dnipro Airfield that destroyed some infrastructure, but no evidence that any S-300 missile defense system had been destroyed by Russia.
Over the weekend, US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin spoke to a small group of Ukrainian troops who were in the United States for military training at the start of the Russian invasion.
The troops were trained on switchblade drones while in the United States and were due to return to Ukraine on Sunday.
The official was not aware of any current plans to bring Ukrainian forces to the United States for training, but Washington was considering various options for training Ukrainians to use these types of drones.
Reporting by Idrees Ali and Christopher Gallagher; Adaptation by John Stonestreet and Grant McCool