Vladimir Putin has “significantly weakened” Russia’s huge armed forces with his invasion of Ukraine, British defence chiefs said on Tuesday.
They also stressed that failures in strategic planning and in executing the Russian president’s military campaign in Ukraine had meant it had not succeeded in “translating numerical strength into decisive advantage”.
Mr Putin’s lightning invasion plan from February 24, which included seizing Kyiv within days, failed spectacularly.
He has refocused his military campaign on the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, pouring thousands more troops into operations there.
However, so far his forces have only made slow progress and have been pushed back in some areas by strong Ukrainian forces.
In its latest inteligence briefing, the Ministry of Defence in London emphasised that Russia’s defence budget roughly doubled between 2005 and 2018, with investment in several “high-end air, land and sea capabilities”.
From 2008 this underpinned the expansive military modernisation programme New Look, the MoD explained.
“However, the modernisation of its physical equipment has not enabled Russia to dominate Ukraine. Failures both in strategic planning and operational execution have left it unable to translate numerical strength into decisive advantage,” the British defence chiefs stressed.
“Russia’s military is now significantly weaker, both materially and conceptually, as a result of its invasion of Ukraine. Recovery from this will be exacerbated by sanctions. This will have a lasting impact on Russia’s ability to deploy conventional military force.”
The Ministry of Defence estimates that around 15,000 Russian troops have been killed since the invasion started more than two months ago, with the number injured or incapacitated three to four times as high.
As the West is sending more weapons to Ukraine, a senior US official warned that Russia plans to annex large portions of the east of the country later this month.
Michael Carpenter, US ambassador to the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, said America believes the Kremlin also plans to recognize the southern city of Kherson as an independent republic. Neither move would be recognized by the United States or its allies, he said.
Mr Carpenter cited information that Russia is planning to hold sham referendums in the so-called Donetsk and Luhansk people’s republics that would “try to add a veneer of democratic or electoral legitimacy” and attach the entities to Russia. He also said there were signs that Russia would engineer an independence vote in Kherson.
He noted that mayors and local legislators there have been abducted, that internet and cellphone service has been severed and that a Russian school curriculum is soon to be imposed. Ukraine’s government has said Russia also has introduced the rouble as currency there.
In the bombed-out city of Mariupol, on the Azov Sea, more than 100 people, including elderly women and mothers with small children, left the rubble-strewn Azovstal steelworks on Sunday and set out in buses and ambulances for the Ukrainian-controlled city of Zaporizhzhia, about 140 miles to the northwest, according to authorities and video released by the two sides.
Mariupol Deputy Mayor Sergei Orlov told the BBC that the evacuees were making slow progress. Authorities gave no explanation for the delay.
At least some of the civilians were apparently taken to a village controlled by Russia-backed separatists. The Russian military said some chose to stay in separatist areas, while dozens left for Ukrainian-held territory.
In the past, Ukraine has accused Moscow’s troops of taking civilians against their will to Russia or Russian-controlled areas. The Kremlin has denied it.
The Russian bombardment of the sprawling plant by air, tank and ship picked up again after the partial evacuation, Ukraine’s Azov Battalion, which is helping to defend the mill, said on the Telegram messaging app.
Mr Orlov said high-level negotiations were underway among Ukraine, Russia and international organizations on evacuating more people.
The steel-plant evacuation, if successful, would represent rare progress in easing the human cost of the war, which has caused particular suffering in Mariupol.
Previous attempts to open safe corridors out of the southern port city and other places have broken down, with Ukrainian officials accusing Russian forces of shooting and shelling along agreed-on evacuation routes.
Before the weekend evacuation, overseen by the United Nations and the Red Cross, about 1,000 civilians were believed to be in the plant along with an estimated 2,000 Ukrainian defenders. Russia has demanded that the fighters surrender; they have refused.
As many as 100,000 people overall may still be in Mariupol, which had a prewar population of more than 400,000. Russian forces have pounded much of the city into rubble, trapping civilians with little food, water, heat or medicine.
Some Mariupol residents got out of the city on their own, often in damaged private cars.
As sunset approached, Mariupol resident Yaroslav Dmytryshyn rattled up to a reception center in Zaporizhzhia in a car with a back seat full of youngsters and two signs taped to the back window: “Children” and “Little ones.”
“I can’t believe we survived,” he said, looking worn but in good spirits after two days on the road.
“There is no Mariupol whatsoever,” he said. “Someone needs to rebuild it, and it will take millions of tons of gold.” He said they lived just across the railroad tracks from the steel plant. “Ruined,” he said. “The factory is gone completely.”
Anastasiia Dembytska, who took advantage of the cease-fire to leave with her daughter, nephew and dog, said she could see the steelworks from her window, when she dared to look out.
“We could see the rockets flying” and clouds of smoke over the plant, she said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told Greek state television that remaining civilians in the steel plant were afraid to board buses because they feared they would be taken to Russia. He said he had been assured by the United Nations that they would be allowed to go to areas his government controls.
More than one million people, including nearly 200,000 children, have been taken from Ukraine to Russia since the Russian invasion began, Russia’s Defense Ministry said Monday, according to TASS.
Defence Ministry official Mikhail Mizintsev said that number included 11,550 people, including 1,847 children, in the previous 24 hours, “without the participation of the Ukrainian authorities.”
He said those civilians “were evacuated to the territory of the Russian Federation from the dangerous regions of the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics,” and other parts of Ukraine, according to the report. No details were provided.
Mr Zelensky also said that at least 220 Ukrainian children have been killed by the Russian army since the war began, and 1,570 educational institutions have been destroyed or damaged.
Ukrainian and Western officials say Moscow’s troops are raining fire indiscriminately, taking a heavy toll on civilians while making only slow progress.
The governor of the Odesa region along the Black Sea Coast, Maksym Marchenko, said on Telegram that a Russian missile strike Monday on an Odesa infrastructure target caused deaths and injuries. He gave no details. Mr Zelensky said the attack destroyed a dormitory and killed a 14-year-old boy.
Ukraine said Russia also struck a strategic road and rail bridge west of Odesa. The bridge was heavily damaged in previous Russian strikes, and its destruction would cut a supply route for weapons and other cargo from neighboring Romania.
The attack on Odessa came eight years to the day after deadly clashes between Ukrainian government supporters and protesters calling for autonomy in the country’s east. The government supporters in 2014 firebombed a trade union building containing pro-autonomy demonstrators, killing over 40 people.
Ukraine claimed to have destroyed two small Russian patrol boats in the Black Sea.
