I will note again that we should treat all these reports of troop movements and battles as tentative. Our ability to see what is happening is blurry at best. But I wanted to update you on my post below about Ukrainian counter offensives. At a Pentagon briefing today, reporters heard that Russian forces to the northwest of Kyiv have started building defensive positions. So they don’t seem to be going anywhere. However, to the east, where Russian forces were within 15 to 20 kilometers of the city center are now 55 kilometers away after a counter-offensive by Ukrainian Army forces.
The wording of WaPo reporter Dan Lamothe’s report was a bit ambiguous to me. It seems like some of that thirty or forty kilometers could have been prior to the counter-offensive of the last couple days. But it does seem like things are moving on the ground outside Kyiv and there’s little near-term chance of the city being encircled or conquered.