Military briefing: Why Russia is deploying more troops to Ukraine

The Russians are desperately short of manpower,” said Jack Watling, research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute. “They have advanced along multiple axes and divided their forces. If they were operating at a high tempo and had been able to do what they set out to then it would make sense, but given the low motivation of troops what they have actually managed to do is fix themselves in several, independent urban battles — and in each of those they lack the mass to take the cities they are sieging by assault.”