At the same time, the 60-kilometer-long Russian army is still stranded on the outskirts of Kyiv and is currently being hit by the Ukrainian army.
The Ukrainian military announced on the 3rd that it had shot dead Russian Major General Andrei Sukhovetskiy, deputy commander of the 41st Army Corps of the Central Military District. If the news is true, it is bound to bring down the morale of the Russian army.
However, Putin is stepping up the offensive, and the war situation is not optimistic.
Michael Kofman, a Russian military expert at the Center for Naval Analysis (CNA), a U.S. think tank, tweeted that the 4th may be a turning point in Russia’s tactics. With the ground forces frustrated, the Russian military will launch more air strikes in the future.
U.S. military intelligence has determined that the Russian military has begun to increase its airstrikes on Kyiv, using a “slowannihilation” tactic, which has slowly eroded Ukraine’s morale.
The successive setbacks also made the Russian army more vicious. In addition to using vacuum bombs, according to the “Ukraine Pravda” report, the Russian army also airdropped a large number of “PFM-1” anti-personnel anti-personnel mines banned by international conventions in Kharkiv.
This anti-infantry mine weighs only 20 grams and is called “Butterfly Mine” because it resembles a butterfly. It was developed by the Soviet Union during the Vietnam War. Its strategic goal is to blow up the hands and feet of enemy soldiers and make them incapacitated .
The fuze of the “Butterfly Thunder” is very sensitive, and once the insurance is released, it cannot be restored to the insurance state. In addition, the large number of sprays, so it is a great threat to civilians. Arms dealers deliberately make it bright colors, and even children may pick it up and play and get injured, so it is called “one of the most evil weapons invented by mankind”.
The US “Foreign Policy” magazine reporter Jack Detsch wrote on Twitter on the evening of the 3rd that the US Department of Defense summarized the eighth day of the Russian-Ukrainian war, mainly in three points. First, Russia has dispatched 90% of its troops. Stationed on the Ukrainian border; second, the Russian army still plans to surround Kyiv; third, the Russian army has shown a “clear willingness” to target Ukrainian civilians, but the United States is not clear whether the Russian army deliberately chose civilians to strike.
Deutch also quoted a senior U.S. defense official as saying that Russia’s military strikes against government buildings in Ukraine’s capital Kyiv and the second-largest city of Kharkiv are currently weakening the current regime in Ukraine.
Planting a puppet government to replace the current president, Volodymyr Zelensky, is seen as one of Putin’s main tactics.
While fighting on land, the Russian army is deploying Black Navy forces to land in Ukraine.
U.S. defense analyst and author HI Sutton warned on Twitter that satellite images on the afternoon of the 3rd showed that the Russian naval formation originally staying in the waters west of Crimea began to move and is believed to be preparing for Odessa (Odessa) ) near the landing.
The mayor of Mariupol, a city on the Black Sea coast, confirmed that the city was continuously attacked by the Russian army, and even rescue was difficult.
Deutch also quoted the U.S. Department of Defense as saying that after 480 Russian air strikes, the Ukrainian Air Force still maintains most of its air defense and missile defense systems. There is still a considerable amount of available troops.