Some Russian military vehicles around Ukraine’s capital have broken off of the attempt to encircle the city in what appears to be a withdrawal, according to new satellite imagery.
The pictures show columns of Russian armored vehicles forming up into columns and convoys, according to analysts with Rochan Consulting, a private aerospace and defense consulting firm which first noted the movements and shared their findings with The Daily Beast.
“Prior to the 25 March convoy formations, Russian ground forces were dispersed throughout the forested areas near Lubyanka and Hostomel. From there, Russian artillery would set up in nearby clearings to fire into civilian areas,” said Chris Biggers, an imagery analyst monitoring the conflict.
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The area where radar-imaging satellites caught sight of the vehicles is close to Hostomel airport, where special operations troops from the Russian Airborne Forces (VDV) had tried and failed to capture the strategic airfield early on in the war.
While the withdrawal of some Russian forces offers relief for Ukraine, there’s still no evidence that Russia’s assault on Ukraine is winding down overall and it remains unclear whether the forces Moscow is pulling out now will be redeployed later on. Late Wednesday, Ukrainian and American officials said they believed Russian forces seen withdrawing from Ukrainian territory were leaving in order to reset, resupply, and redeploy towards other theaters.
Capella Space satellites first captured the pictures on March 26, two days before Russian Deputy Defense Minister Alexander Fomin claimed that Moscow would “drastically, exponentially, reduce military activity” around Kyiv following the failed attempt to encircle and capture the Ukrainian capital.
Fomin presented the withdrawal pledge as a diplomatic concession “to increase mutual trust and create the necessary conditions for further negotiations” but military experts believe the move is less a magnanimous gesture on Russia’s part and more of a bow to the reality of how poorly the Russian military’s effort to take the capital has fared.
In the case of Russian forces around Hostomel, Rochan Consulting analysts noted strike damage and scarred terrain near where Russian vehicles had previously been seen, suggesting that Ukrainian forces had managed to strike back at the attempted cordon of Kyiv.
Early on in the invasion, Russian troops streamed south across the border from Belarus and into the northwest suburbs of Kyiv in an apparent attempt to seize the city and decapitate the Ukrainian government’s leadership. Ukrainian forces reported finding Russian saboteurs and assassins who had snuck into the city as the VDV troops mounted their failed assault on Hostomel airport.
In the weeks since the initial assaults on Kyiv failed to capture the city, satellite imagery has captured scenes of stalled Russian vehicles with little effort to move further into the capital region. Imagery collected by the satellite imaging company Maxar showed Russian armored vehicles near the scene of the recent retreat digging in and fortifying their positions with earthen berms rather than moving forward.
Last week, the Russian military’s General Staff implied that the attempt to seize Kyiv had never been an important part of Russia’s invasion and that the primary objective lay further east. Russian General Staff Main Operational Directorate head Sergei Rudskoi claimed, improbably, that the first phase of the conflict had completed successfully and that Moscow would begin to focus on “the main goal, liberation of Donbas,” where the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Lugank Peoples Republics along Russia’s border with Ukraine are located.
And while some vehicles may be on their way out of Ukraine, Russian forces are still attacking Kyiv. Hours after Fomin’s announcement of a claimed goodwill gesture towards Kyiv, Ukrainian officials said the city remained under siege. Reuters reported that Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko told European Union officials that “The whole night we listened to sirens, to rocket attacks and we listened to huge explosions east of Kyiv and north of Kyiv.”
