By Peter Weber The Week
Most of Russia’s military offensives in Ukraine continue to be stalled amid fierce Ukrainian resistance, but Russia’s military continues to fire dozens of missiles and rockets at Ukrainian civilian and military targets every day, a senior U.S. defense official said at a briefing in Brussels on Wednesday.
The U.S. estimates that Russian President Vladimir Putin has “around 75 percent of his total military committed to the fight in Ukraine,” the official said, clarifying later that the 75 percent figure mostly refers to “battalion tactical groups, which is the units that he has primarily relied upon.”
“At the height of our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, we were about 29 percent committed,” former U.S. Army Europe commander Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges noted Tuesday at the Center for European Policy Analysis think tank. “And it was difficult to sustain that.”
Britain’s Ministry of Defense said Tuesday that given Putin’s significant “personnel losses” in Ukraine, “Russia is redeploying forces from as far afield as its Eastern Military District, Pacific Fleet, and Armenia. It is also increasingly seeking to exploit irregular sources such as private military companies, Syrian and other mercenaries.”
