There have been a “series of missteps,” Austin said in an interview with US broadcaster CNN during his trip to Bulgaria. The Russian soldiers have not progressed as quickly in Ukraine as they had imagined.
“They had imagined that they would move fast and take the capital very quickly, but they weren’t able to do that,” Austin said. He also assumed that the Russians would not use tactical information well. The cooperation between the air and ground forces is also not good. “So there are a number of things that we would have expected that we just didn’t see.”
The Pentagon keeps saying that the Russian military is making little progress in Ukraine. North and northwest of the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, Russian soldiers would not make any “significant advances” on the city, a senior US defense official said. No movement is observed east of Kyiv either. The Pentagon assumes that Ukrainian airspace is still contested and that the Russians have not gained the upper hand.
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