Senior Military Official Holds a Background Briefing > U.S. Department of Defense > Transcript

SENIOR MILITARY OFFICIAL:  Hi, everybody, (inaudible). Again, good to be back with you.  And I look forward to our conversation today, and hopefully some helpful conversation.

As mentioned the 142nd day of Russia’s unprovoked large-scale invasion of Ukraine.  We assess that Russian forces are limited to incremental, if any, gains around the northern Donbas, held off by Ukrainian defenses.  Russian forces continue to deploy indiscrimate artillery bombardment, along with air missile strikes.  I’ll give you a just kind of around the battlefield of what we’re seeing on the ground.  Near Kharkiv, we assess that the Ukrainians are continuing to defeat Russian attempts to gain ground.  In the vicinity of Izium, and Slovyansk, it’s generally the same.

So you know, pretty strong defenses from the Ukrainians, and the Russians have stated publicly that they want to move on Slovyansk, but still have not been able to do so.  And then we certainly assess that they…