“Russian Progress in Ukraine Slower than Planned:” Top Russian Official

Manas Dasgupta

NEW DELHI, March 14: Even as Russia and Ukraine began the fourth round of talks on Monday for ending the war, the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky renewed his plea to the NATO countries to declare his sky a no-fly zone,” a plea that has not found a favourable response from the United Sates so far after Russia threatened to treat any such move as “an entry into the war and punishable.”

For the first time, a top Russian official publicly admitted that the Russian war progress in Ukraine was much slower than planned, but maintained that Russia was “going towards its goal step-by-step and the victory will be ours.”

National Guard chief Viktor Zolotov, speaking at a church service led by Orthodox Patriarch Kirill on Sunday, blamed the slower than expected progress on what he said were far-right Ukrainian forces hiding behind civilians, an accusation repeatedly made by officials in Russia. His comments appeared at odds with an assessment on Friday by Russia’s Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu who told Putin that “everything is going according to plan.”

“I would like to say that yes, not everything is going as fast as we would like,” Zolotov, once in charge of Putin’s personal security, said in comments posted on the National Guard’s website. “…But we are going towards our goal step by step and victory will be for us, and this icon will protect the Russian army and accelerate our victory.” Zolotov is a powerful security official who was once Putin’s security chief. He now heads the National Guard, a kind of internal military force that includes the riot police and other forces. It is subordinated directly to Putin and has forces deployed in Ukraine.

The plea for declaring Ukraine a “no-fly zone” was renewed by Zelensky a day after 35 people were killed in a Russian missile attack on a military base in western Ukraine. The President in a video statement while urging the NATO countries to impose a no-fly zone over the Ukrainian sky with a warning, “If you don’t close our sky, it is only a matter of time before Russian rockets fall on your territory, on NATO territory,” he said.

Even as the Russian forces continue to close in on Kyiv with intensive fighting going-on for the control of the capital city, for the first time a top Russian official admitted that the progress in Ukraine was much slower than expected and was still not going according to the plan. Russia had so far been claiming that the progress was going “according to the plan” and Russia was not inclined to intensify the offensive.

Both Russia and China vehemently denied the US allegation that Russia had asked China to help with weapons and said it the US plan of spreading “disinformation.” Neither Russia had sought help from China nor China helped it with any supply of weapons, both the countries claimed.

Russia has not asked China for military assistance, said Kremlin on a controversy which broke out after some US officials said Moscow has asked Beijing for military and economic aid for its war in Ukraine.

A Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson also said assertions from US officials that Russia asked Beijing for military equipment for its campaign in Ukraine were “disinformation” from the US. The comments came during a regular Chinese foreign ministry briefing in Beijing.

Earlier in the day, some US officials told media that Russia has asked China for military and economic aid for its war in Ukraine. The request for equipment is not new and was made soon after Russia launched an offensive in Ukraine on February 24.

Ukraine on Monday reported renewed air strikes on an airport in the west, heavy shelling on Chernihiv northeast of the capital and attacks on the southern town of Mykolayiv. More than 2,500 residents of the Black Sea port city of Mariupol have been killed since Russian invaded Ukraine on February 24, presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovych said.

Ukrainian authorities say two people have died and seven were injured after Russian forces struck an aircraft factory, and another person was killed when a residential building was fired upon. The Antonov aircraft factory is Ukraine’s largest and is best known for producing many of the world’s largest ever cargo planes. The Kyiv city Government says a large fire broke out after the strike on the factory. One person died and three were injured when the residential building was hit, authorities said.

Fighting continued Monday on the outskirts of Kyiv, to the west, northwest, east and northeast, the Ukrainian president’s office said Monday. Regional officials are preparing more evacuations from the targeted areas.

Airstrikes hit residential buildings near the important southern city of Mykolaiv, as well as in the eastern city of Kharkiv, and knocked out a television tower in the Rivne region in the northwest, the president’s office said. Explosions rang out overnight around the Russian-occupied Black Sea port of Kherson. The government announced plans for new humanitarian aid and evacuation corridors, although ongoing shelling caused similar efforts to fail in the last week.

Denying that it had sought China’s help, The Kremlin said on Monday that Russia could take full control of major Ukrainian cities and cautioned the West that it had sufficient military clout to fulfil all of its aims in Ukraine without any need for help from China. “The Defence Ministry of the Russian Federation, while ensuring the maximum safety of the civilian population, does not exclude the possibility of taking major population centres under full control,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said.

Peskov said that some of Ukraine’s major cities were already surrounded by Russian forces. When asked about remarks by U.S. officials who had said that Russia had asked China for military equipment, Peskov said “No.” “Russia possesses its own independent potential to continue the operation. As we said, it is going according to plan and will be completed on time and in full.”

The United States and its European allies have cast Putin’s invasion as an imperial-style land grab that has so far been poorly executed because Moscow underestimated Ukrainian resistance and Western resolve to punish Russia.

The United Nations refugee agency UNHCR reported that nearly 2.7 million people had fled Ukraine as of Saturday, nearly 1.7 million of them heading to Poland.

Meanwhile, Britain said it would donate more than 500 mobile generators to help Ukraine and weaken Russia’s attempts to cripple its power supply, Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng said adding that they would be enough to power 20,000 buildings. “Sending portable electricity generators to Ukraine will help keep essential services running, weaken (Russian President Vladimir) Putin’s attempts to cripple Ukraine’s power supply, and help support the extraordinarily brave Ukrainian response to the Kremlin’s war waging,” Kwarteng said in a statement.

A high-voltage power line to Ukraine’s Chernobyl nuclear plant was damaged by Russian forces not long after electricity supplies were restored to the facility, grid operator Ukrenergo said in a statement on Monday. It did not say if all external power supply to the plant had been lost as a result of the damage, but demanded access to the area to carry out repairs.