The Kremlin’s offensive has made little progress in recent months after its troops were forced back from Kyiv in the first weeks of the war. Vladimir Putin’s troops have only managed to capture an area the size of Andorra – an estimated one percent of what they lost – in the past 39 days, according to the latest assessment by the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a US based think-tank, suggests. It came as Sergei Shoigu, the Russian defense minister, told a conference that Russian forces were deliberately slowing down their offensive operations in Ukraine to reduce the number of civilian casualties. Despite the apparent slowdown, Mr Shoigu insisted that Russia’s invasion was going according to plan and his forces would achieve their ultimate goals. Russia’s defense ministry has previously said it still intends to topple the Ukrainian government despite its withdrawal from Kyiv to focus on the eastern Donbass region.
