Thread by @Osinttechnical

Just a thread of updates from a senior US defense official- “There really hasn't been a lot of changes to talk about. The only thing that I would highlight -- more than 1,000 missile launches [by Russia towards Ukraine] now.”

“We have observed some, I wouldn't call it increased, but continued naval activity in the north Black Sea off the coast of Odessa, but no shelling over the course of the last 24 hours that no imminent signs of an amphibious assault on Odessa”

“we still assess that they're 15 kilometers away from [Kyiv] city center; basically, no change.”

“We still believe the Ukrainians are in control of that town called Brovary. No movement south of Chernihiv. Chernihiv is still what we consider isolated, but we're not seeing any new line axis of attack on Kyiv”

“they [Russia] continue the long-range fires into Kyiv, trying to wear the city down”

“It's unclear what they're [Russia] going to do, what their next step is. It's hard for us to know with certainty. They're just basically where they were before… the Ukrainians are putting a lot of effort into defending Kyiv”

“I don't want to convey the error that this is some sort of static environment. There's a lot of fighting going on. The Ukrainians are -- they are the reason why they [Russia] haven't been able to move forward”

“We have anecdotal indications that Russian morale is flagging. Now, I want to be careful here… we're not polling all of the battalion tactical groups. We don't have insight into every unit in every location.”

“some of that is, we believe, a function of poor leadership, lack of information that the troops are getting about their mission and objectives, and -- I think disillusionment-- from being resisted as fiercely as they have been.”

“we are continuing to work with allies and partners on the possibility of helping Ukraine out with long range air defense systems and systems that we know that the Ukrainians know how to use and are trained on”

“We do still assess the airspace is contested. I don’t have a sortie rate for today. But we don't -- in general, we haven't seen any major changes by either Air Force, in terms of how much they're flying”

“we're seeing several [Russian] surface ships, about half a dozen or so surface ships off the coast, not far from Odesa. At least two of them are LSVs, amphibious ships, the rest are surface combatants… we're not sure what they're planning to do. What they’re preparing to do”

“frigates, a couple of amphib ships, one mine warfare ship, again, not exactly clear they're not -- but we're not seeing imminent activity that would indicate that they are about to launch an amphibious assault on Odesa.”

“it's not just Stingers. I mean, we're flowing more Javelins to them. And there are other anti-armor crew-served weapons that other nations are providing that the Ukrainians are using with great effect on Russian heavy vehicles, including their artillery.”

“these tactical UAVs can be useful against Russian vehicles and artillery. And so we're trying to get them the kinds of things that we think they could use in this fight, in particular, the fight against artillery bombardment and the long-range fires by the Russians.”

“they haven't moved any closer to [Kyiv] but they have moved forces from their rear to join their advancing elements… some of those capabilities are artillery, long-range artillery but artillery to be sure. So it appears that they continue to want to conduct a siege of Kyiv”

“We have seen an increase of strikes on civilian infrastructure and civilian targets”

“I don't have an inventory list of what the Russian missile stockpile. We still assess that they have a significant amount of their combat power available to them.”

“We have seen [Russia] rely a little bit more than we saw in the early going on dumb bombs, if you will, non-precision guided. We think that it’s possible that they might be either conserving their precision-guided munitions or beginning to experience shortages.”

“[Russia is] beginning to consider resupply from outside of Ukraine -- in other words, from elsewhere in the country or even from inventories that they might have overseas, but we haven't seen them actually pull on stocks from elsewhere”

“We have seen a continuation of the Russian attempts to blame stuff they're doing on the Ukrainians or to accuse the Ukrainians of doing stuff that they haven't done yet… in Russia, anecdotally, we see their narratives having more of an effect”

“outside of Russia there's little to no evidence that their information ops are working. In fact, we've seen quite the opposite. Ukrainians are doing a good job staying ahead of of the information ops.”

“We absolutely think that while [Russia] still has the majority of their combat available to them, I mean, just that they're talking about re-supply and re-sourcing tells you that they are beginning to get concerned about longevity here.”

“I want to stress that we haven't seen them move supplies from elsewhere in Russia to Ukraine, they still have a lot available to them. But that they are thinking about it just three weeks in certainly is noteworthy.”

“we talked, back in week one, and we talked about how they had not planned properly for logistics and sustainment, and how they were struggling to do fueling and even feeding their troops. We have seen them try to overcome some of those early logistics and sustainment issues.”

“But they [Russia] are still struggling to sustain their troops in the field. It's uneven to be sure but they are still struggling with that. Part of that we believe is because they didn't properly plan for -- to execute good logistics…

…But also because they ran into a stiffer resistance from the Ukrainians than they expected.”

“they [Russia] clearly weren't ready for the pushback that they have been getting from - the Ukrainians. So three weeks in, they're still able to maintain their force in the field. But not without difficulty.”

“[The Russians are] basically frozen around the country on multiple lines of axes, struggling to fuel themselves, and to feed their troops, and to supply them with arms and ammunition, and meeting a very determined Ukrainian resistance.”

“they [Russia] want to push south down towards Donetsk and down towards Mariupol, and from Mariupol, they want to push North again to try to seal off the Donbas area.”

“we can't say that the Ukrainians have necessarily taken back territory that the Russians have occupied. But they haven't occupied that much.”

“They've [Russia] got the town of Kherson, they still haven't taken Mykolaiv, they took Melitopol and Berdyans'k what a week or so ago. They haven't taken Mariupol. That they haven't made progress I think beyond really anything in the last, you know, few days.”

Full transcript link defense.gov/News/Transcrip…