The Pentagon believes that the Russian forces around the Ukrainian cities of Kyiv and Chernihiv have “completed their withdrawal from the area,” a senior U.S. defense official said.
Those forces have moved back into Belarus, where they “are beginning the refit and resupply these units. We have not seen those units be redeployed,” the official continued.
It’s unclear exactly when they would get redeployed, though the expectation is that they wouldn’t “want to spend too much time on refit and resupply because they have made a very public show of saying that they’re going to prioritize their efforts on the Donbas region,” the official said.Despite the troops leaving Kyiv, the city is"still under threat" because Russia could hit the city with airstrikes from afar.
While the Russians are reprioritizing the southeastern part of Ukraine, they have been unable to capture Mariupol, a key port city on the Sea of Azov, though the city remains"isolated." In recent days, there have been new accusations of war crimes levied against Russian forces for their alleged actions in Bucha, a suburb northwest of Kyiv, after hundreds of bodies were found buried in a mass grave and other civilians were found shot and killed with their wrists bound behind them and other signs of torture.
The official said the Bucha attack “appears to be premeditated” and called it “very, very deliberate,” adding, however, that “it’s not the first time in this last 41 days or 42 days of conflict where the Russians have been committing war crimes, and it’s not the first example of brutality, as brutal as it is.
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