Some of Vladimir Putin’s military units seeing many of their soldiers killed have been forced to withdraw temporarily from Ukraine, British defence chiefs said on Wednesday.
They said these troops were heading back across the border to Belarus or Russia to “reorganise and resupply”.
The military movements out of Ukraine highlighted the difficulties Mr Putin’s invasion is facing in gaining ground, they added.
However, they warned that to “compensate” for the stalling of ground forces, Russian military chiefs were likely to carry on bombarding towns and cities with shelling and air strikes.
In its latest intelligence briefing on day 35 of the conflict, the Ministry of Defence said: “Russian units suffering heavy losses have been forced to return to Belarus and Russia to reorganise and resupply.
“Such activity is placing further pressure on Russia’s already strained logistics and demonstrates the difficulties Russia is having reorganising its units in forward areas within Ukraine.”
However, it also warned: “Russia will likely continue to compensate for its reduced ground manoeuvre capability through mass artillery and missile strikes.”
The briefing explained further: “Russia’s stated focus on an offensive in Donetsk and Luhansk is likely a tacit admission that it is struggling to sustain more than one significant axis of advance.”
Some reports suggest that more than 10,000 Russian soldiers have died since the invasion started on February 24, with some of them in their late teens.
Amid reports of such young fatalities, Tom Tugendhat, Conservative chairman of the Commons foreign affairs committee, tweeted: “Putin is killing his own nation’s children.”
Thousands, if not tens of thousands, of civilians have died since the invasion started on February 24, as well as many Ukrainian soldiers.
As new explosions were heard outside Kyiv on Wednesday morning, Ukraine and the West reacted with scepticism to Russia’s promise in negotiations to scale down military operations around the capital and Chernihiv in the north of the country.
Justice Secretary Dominic Raab told Sky News: “We judge the Russian military machine by its actions not just its words.
“There is obviously some scepticism that it will regroup to attack again rather than seriously engage in diplomacy.”
British and US defence chiefs believe the Russian move is partly an admission of the failure of Mr Putin’s lighting invasion plan, which is thought to have involved seizing Kyiv on the first day, and that Russia defence chiefs are now seeking to refocus forces to attack the Donbas region in the east of the country having realised they could not carry out advances on multiple fronts.
Peace talks took place in Istanbul on Tuesday more than a month into the largest attack on a European nation since World War Two that has left an appalling death toll, forced nearly four million to flee abroad and pummelled Russia’s economy with sanctions.
The invasion has been halted on most fronts by stiff resistance from Ukrainian forces who have recaptured territory even as civilians are trapped in besieged cities.
“In order to increase mutual trust and create the necessary conditions for further negotiations and achieving the ultimate goal of agreeing and signing (an) agreement, a decision was made to radically, by a large margin, reduce military activity in the Kyiv and Chernihiv directions,” Russian Deputy Defence Minister Alexander Fomin said on Tuesday.
He made no mention of other areas that have seen heavy fighting, including around the southern besieged city of Mariupol, where thousands of civilians are feared to have died, or the cities of Sumy and Kharkiv in the east, and Kherson and Mykolaiv in the south.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warned against reading too much into his words.
“Ukrainians are not naive people,” he said late on Tuesday.
“Ukrainians have already learned during these 34 days of invasion, and over the past eight years of the war in Donbass, that the only thing they can trust is a concrete result.”
Russia has started moving very small numbers of troops away from positions around Kyiv in a move that is more of a repositioning than a retreat or a withdrawal from the war, said the Pentagon.
“We all should be prepared to watch for a major offensive against other areas of Ukraine,” spokesman John Kirby told a news briefing. “It does not mean that the threat to Kyiv is over.”
In London, the Ministry of Defence said in an intelligence update: “It is highly likely that Russia will seek to divert combat power from the north to their offensive in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in the east.”
Fighting in these two areas controlled by Moscow-backed separatist has been taking place since 2014.
Meanwhile, Human Rights Watch accused Russia of using banned POM-3 anti-personnel mines in the eastern Kharkiv region.
