WASHINGTON — Russia has committed almost all of its combat power along the border to Ukraine, the Pentagon said Monday, announcing the deployment of 500 more U.S. troops to Europe to bolster NATO security.
As President Vladimir Putin ramps up operations, the US Department of Defense has also warned that Russian strikes against civilians are intensifying and that Moscow is seeking to recruit foreign fighters, especially Syrians, for the war.
But the deadly invasion has slowed, and aside from some victories in southern Ukraine, Russian forces “haven’t really made much headway in the past few days,” Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said.
The United States has already sent an additional 12,000 troops to Europe since February, but President Joe Biden has stressed that US troops will not clash with Russian forces in Ukraine.
Over the weekend, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin ordered about 500 additional troops to be sent to locations in Europe, especially on NATO’s eastern flank, “to reinforce US forces that are already in the theater of operations,” Kirby told reporters.
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“This additional personnel is being deployed to respond to the current security environment caused by Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine and will certainly help strengthen and enhance the NATO alliance’s deterrence and defense capabilities.”
Kirby said the Defense Department estimated that of the Russian forces concentrated along the border, estimated by Western countries to be in excess of 150,000, Putin “has received almost all of the massive combat power he has amassed inside Ukraine.”
As the Ukrainians struggle to contain the attack, Russia launched longer-range attacks — a mix of bombing, rocket launches, artillery strikes and more than 625 missiles — to make up for the lack of movement on the ground, the Pentagon said. said.
Ukrainian police officers patrol the street after a shelling in Ukraine’s second largest city Kharkiv on March 7, 2022. (Sergey Bobok/AFP)
“We really believe… that they have morale problems, supply problems, fuel problems, food problems,” he added.
“They are meeting very tough and determined Ukrainian resistance.”
Shelling of Kyiv, Kharkiv, Chernihiv in the north and Nikolaev and Mariupol in the south has increased, Kirby said, “causing an increasing number of civilian casualties” and destroying homes, churches, hospitals and schools.
“The bottom line is that more civilians are dying and getting injured,” he added.
“And Mr. Putin still has a choice: not to escalate… but to find a diplomatic way forward and end the invasion.”
The Pentagon has said that, with Putin’s vast firepower at his disposal, this is noteworthy, but it’s still unclear why he felt it necessary to bring in foreign fighters.
Satellite image of Russian tanks massed near Rechitsa in Belarus, February 10, 2022. (Screenshot, satellite imagery @2022 Maxar Technologies)
“We know they are trying to recruit Syrians to fight,” a senior US defense official said.
In the meantime, concern has grown that Odessa, the country’s main port and major economic center, is on Russian radar.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warned on Sunday that Moscow was “preparing to bomb Odessa.”
But a US official said the Pentagon “has not yet seen any evidence of movement in Odessa.”
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