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American officials are not convinced that Ukraine intends to maintain its position in Russia in the long term.
By Eric Schmitt, Helene Cooper and Julian E. Barnes
Reporting from Washington
More than two weeks after Ukraine’s incursion into western Russia, Ukrainian politicians have begun talking about building a buffer zone there. But it’s unclear exactly how far Ukraine might go to advance in Russia and how long it plans to stay there, U. S. officials said. saying.
Ukrainian forces have complex other instructions after temporarily breaching weak border defenses earlier this month. They have expanded their incursion where they encounter the slightest resistance, defining the contours of what could simply be a defensible buffer zone for Ukrainian cities and towns, which President Volodymyr Zelensky says is now one of the main targets of the attack.
After the first week of fighting, Ukraine claimed only about 400 square miles of Russian territory, a domain roughly equivalent to the length of Los Angeles.
But U. S. officials are not convinced that Ukraine intends to maintain its position in Russia in the long term. Ukrainian forces have not dug the kind of extensive trenches needed to protect soldiers and infantry aircraft from enemy fire, if Russia musters enough firepower to repel the attack. They did not lay minefields to slow a counterattack or build barriers to slow down Russian tanks, officials say.
“What war has shown us so far is that the way to slow down an army is through ‘defense in depth,'” Seth G said. Jones, senior vice president at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, referring to the strategy of employing multiple layers of defensive positioning. “If they don’t protect the territory with a combination of trenches and mines, it will be practically to conserve the territory. »
And the more territory Ukraine seizes, the greater the challenge for the roughly 10,000 Ukrainian troops tasked with protecting them, U. S. officials and analysts said.
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