The miles-long Russian convoy headed for Kyiv has stalled, intelligence officials say.

 

Megan Specia

March 3, 2022, 6:11 a.m. ET3 hours ago

3 hours ago

Megan Specia

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/03/03/world/ukraine-russia-news-war#russian-convoy-kyiv

 

The miles-long Russian convoy headed for Kyiv has stalled, intelligence officials say.

 

LONDON — A miles-long convoy of Russian military supply trucks and attack vehicles that has come within 20 miles of the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, “has made little discernible progress in over three days,” according to an intelligence assessment released by Britain’s defense ministry on Thursday.

 

The convoy, seen in a number of satellite images taken this week, had raised alarm among military strategy experts who saw it as an indication that Russian forces were preparing for a potentially new phase of unrestricted warfare. But so far the convoy has appeared to stall in place.

 

Analysts believe that it includes food supply trucks for soldiers, fuel for vehicles and heavy artillery.

 

The bulk of the convoy remains about 18 miles from Kyiv, “having been delayed by staunch Ukrainian resistance, mechanical breakdown and congestion,” according to the British assessment.

 

It had stretched along a roadway from Antonov airport to the north of Kyiv, extending northward for about 40 miles, according to Maxar Technologies, which released the images. But experts cautioned that the convoy is not one continuous line, with some vehicles spaced some distance apart from one another. In some sections, vehicles are moving two or three abreast.

 

John Kirby, the Pentagon press secretary, in a Tuesday briefing gave a similar assessment from American intelligence, noting that the convoy and more broadly the push toward Kyiv from the north had “remained stalled.” However, he cautioned that it was difficult to know precisely why.

 

He noted that in general the Russian forces appeared to be “deliberately regrouping and reassessing” after experiencing logistical challenges in their initial invasion and after meeting resistance from Ukrainians.

 

There have been a number of other theories as to why the convoy is not moving. Military experts have said that Ukraine’s difficult off-road terrain at this time of year may be partly to blame, pointing to images of heavy military vehicles stuck in quagmires of mud elsewhere. In early spring and late fall, parts of Ukraine experience a messy damp season — known as “Rasputitsa,” or “season of bad roads,” in Russian — that makes movement of heavy military vehicles across open terrain especially difficult.

 

A former civil servant with the U.S. Defense Department, Trent Telenko, posited on Twitter that Russia’s military could be unwilling to move off-road into muddy terrain because the tires of the vehicles had not been properly maintained, based on analysis of images of abandoned vehicles elsewhere in Ukraine.

 

Videos and photos have also emerged on social media of abandoned Russian armored vehicles in Ukraine, including a series of images shared by the Ukrainian Armed Forces that it said showed an abandoned column of vehicles.