Pentagon says Russia has ‘experienced some setbacks’ in its war against Ukraine

Russia has “experienced some setbacks” in its war on Ukraine as the Ukrainian people are “fighting back” and “bravely defending their country”, according to US officials.

Pentagon press secretary John Kirby told reporters on Friday afternoon that “over the last 24 hours” Russian forces do not appear “to have been able to exercise their plans as they deemed that they would”.

“Our understanding is that they have experienced some setbacks,” he said.

“We’ve certainly seen indications that the Russians are not in every case making the progress that they thought they were going to make.”

Several US and UK officials have now said that Russian troops are losing momentum in their invasion, with Ukrainian troops and civilians fighting back with full force against the attack.

With Russian troops encroaching on Kyiv, Ukrainian officials are calling on civilians to arm themselves with Molotov cocktails to defend the capital while round 18,000 firearms have been handed out to volunteers.

Men aged between 18 and 60 are banned from leaving the country and civilians nationwide are vowing to stay and the fight against Russian forces.

On Friday afternoon, a spokesperson for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russian President Vladimir Putin had reached out to explore peace talks and that they were arranging a time and a place.

Mr Kirby said that there had been “measures of success” in Ukraine’s efforts to defend the country from Russia’s “unlawful invasion”.

“We see clear indications that the Ukrainian forces are fighting back and are bravely defending their country,” he said.

“We see clear indications that there have been measures of success in that regard.”

He added: “They’re fighting back. They’re fighting for their country and they’re doing so bravely.”

However, Mr Kirby added that it is a “dynamic, fluid situation” that the US is watching “closely”.

He also doubled down on President Joe Biden’s insistence that US troops would not be sent into Ukraine to fight.

“US troops will not be fighting in Ukraine and our focus is on helping them defend themselves and we have done that and we’re going to continue to look for ways to do that and to shore up our Nato allies and our defences on Nato territory,” he said.

Instead, the US will send “additional security assistance” to help Ukraine “better defend themselves through both lethal and non-lethal assistance”, he said.

“We know they have self defence needs and we are going to do all we can to fill them.”

The US imposed further sanctions on Russia on Friday in coordination with the UK and the EU – this time placing sanctions on Mr Putin himself and his Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

This comes after a wave of sanctions were unveiled on Thursday, targeting Russia’s biggest banks, restricting its access to technologies and sanctioning people with ties to the Kremlin.