The sources said that the initial US assessment from before the invasion — which anticipated that the Ukrainian capital would be overrun within one to four days of a Russian attack — remains the current expectation.
Russian forces have moved to within 20 miles of Kyiv, senior administration officials told lawmakers on Capitol Hill Thursday night.
Officials believe Russia has been facing stiffer resistance from Ukrainian forces than it anticipated, according to the sources. But the officials in that briefing to Capitol Hill declined to say whether they believed Kyiv would fall.
A senior US defense official said Thursday that Russia was “making a move on Kyiv,” CNN previously reported.
Western intelligence officials assess that Russia’s plan is to topple the government in Kyiv and install a Russia-friendly proxy government, but they don’t yet know whether Russian President Vladimir Putin will seek to occupy and hold Ukrainian territory afterwards, one of the sources familiar with the intelligence told CNN.
Ukrainian officials have vowed to resist any occupation.
Rep. Ruben Gallego, a Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, told CNN Friday that if Russia were to capture Kyiv, the US should arm resistance fighters in the country.
“It certainly does impact our response about who we’re actually arming. At that point, we have to make the realization that the Ukrainian military as we know it may be compromised and then, I think, we have to shift to actually supporting partisans and resistance fighters who are willing to take up the fight against Russia,” Gallego said.
This story is breaking and will be updated.
