Russian forces have just three days of fuel, food and ammunition to wage the war after a collapse in their supply chains, Ukrainian military commanders have claimed.
The claims of major shortages have been called “plausible” by western officials, although they said they could not confirm the analysis.
The report of the General Command of the Ukrainian Armed Forces agrees with evidence that the Russian advance has stalled and that they have resumed “indiscriminate and attrition” artillery attacks on civilians.
“We believe the Russian Armed Forces used a lot of materiel, including certain categories of weapons, and we’ve seen anecdotal reports of certain units lacking supplies of one type or another,” the official said.
“It is consistent with progress that has come to a standstill. Logistic chain failures were one of the reasons why they were not as effective as they had hoped.”
A Pentagon official added that there were ongoing morale problems among Russian troops, with food and fuel shortages and frostbite from a lack of proper clothing.
“They are fighting on many fronts,” the US official said.
The Ukrainian military said a major problem for the Russian advance was the failure to put a fuel line forward, although the claim could not be independently verified.
On Monday, the pro-Kremlin tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda reported that 9,861 Russian soldiers had been killed and 16,153 injured in Ukraine, according to the Russian Defense Ministry. The death toll was quickly removed from the newspaper’s website.
Western officials said they believed the figures provided by the newspaper were a “reasonable estimate”. The official said: “It is a level of casualties that has never been seen before [by Russia] really since the second world war. It’s still going on… it’s a conflict on a different scale.”
While Vladimir Putin’s forces have been fighting around Kyiv, a senior US official said fighting has shifted to the streets of Mariupol, where many civilians are trapped between rotting corpses and collapsed buildings.
Two “super powerful bombs” hit the city on Tuesday, although rescue efforts were still ongoing, local authorities said. The port city is said to be shelled by ships in the Sea of Azov.
The Russians should be able to declare Mariupol as their first strategic victory. The city is considered key to securing a Russian corridor between the separatist Donbass region and the illegally annexed Crimea.
It is also home to the largest commercial port in the Sea of Azov, from which Ukraine exports grain, iron and steel, and heavy machinery. However, the US military said it had seen no signs that chemical weapons were being prepared for an imminent deployment.