Russia has probably lost around a third of the ground forces it deployed to Ukraine and its offensive in the Donbas region "has lost momentum and fallen significantly behind schedule," British military intelligence said on Sunday.
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"Despite small-scale initial advances, Russia has failed to achieve substantial territorial gains over the past month whilst sustaining consistently high levels of attrition," the British defense ministry said on Twitter.
"Russia has now likely suffered losses of one-third of the ground combat force it committed in February," the statement said.
It said Russia was unlikely to dramatically accelerate its rate of advance over the next 30 days.
Since Russia's invasion on February 24, Ukraine's military has forced Russia's commanders to abandon an advance on the capital Kyiv, before making rapid gains in the northeast and driving them away from the second biggest city of Kharkiv.
A Ukrainian counteroffensive has been under way near the Russian-held town of Izium, though Ukraine's military reported on Sunday that Russian forces were advancing elsewhere in the Donbas region, the main theater of war over the past month.
Meanwhile, top diplomats from NATO met in Berlin with the alliance's chief, who declared that the war "is not going as Moscow had planned."
"Ukraine can win this war," NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said, adding that the alliance must continue to offer military support to Kyiv. He spoke by video link to the meeting as he recovers from a COVID-19 infection.
On the diplomatic front, both Finland and Sweden took steps bringing them closer to NATO membership despite Russian objections. Finland announced Sunday that it was seeking to join NATO, saying the invasion had changed Europe's security landscape. Several hours later, Sweden's governing party endorsed the country's own bid for membership, which could lead to an application in days.
If the two nonaligned Nordic nations become part of the alliance, it would represent an affront to Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has called NATO's post-Cold War expansion in Eastern Europe as a threat to Russia. NATO says it is a purely defensive alliance.
Even with its setbacks, however, Russia continues to inflict death and destruction across Ukraine. Over the weekend, its forces hit a chemical plant and 11 high-rise buildings in Siverodonetsk, in the Donbas, the regional governor said. Gov. Serhii Haidaii said two people were killed in the shelling and warned residents still in the city to stay in underground shelters.
Russian missiles destroyed "military infrastructure facilities" in the Yavoriv district of western Ukraine, near the border with Poland, the governor of the Lviv region said. Lviv is a major gateway for the Western-supplied weapons Ukraine has acquired during the war.
The Ukrainian military said it held off a renewed Russian offensive in the Donetsk area of the Donbas. Russian troops also tried to advance near the eastern city of Izyum, but Ukrainian forces stopped them, the governor of Ukraine's Kharkiv region, Oleh Sinegubov, reported.
And Ukraine blew up two railway bridges that had been seized by Russian forces in the eastern region of Luhansk, Ukraine's Special Operations Command said Sunday. It posted a video of exploding bridges on Facebook. The command also said it destroyed Russian communication lines in the area to prevent Russia from bringing in more troops to attack the towns of Lisichansk and Severodonetsk, it said.
The Ukrainian claims could not be independently verified, but Western officials also painted a somber picture for Russia.
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In the southern Donbas, the Azov Sea port of Mariupol is now largely under Russian control, except for several hundred Ukrainian troops who have refused to surrender and remain holed up in the Azovstal steel factory.
Many of their wives called on the global community to secure the release of "the entire garrison," during an online news conference. The women said the troops suffered severe food, water and medicine shortages; untreated injuries were sometimes leading to sepsis.
The Ukrainian prosecutor-general's office said regional prosecutors have launched a criminal investigation into Moscow's alleged use of restricted incendiary bombs at the steelworks. International law allows certain use of incendiary munitions but bars their use to directly target enemy personnel or civilians.
Turkey's presidential spokesman, Ibrahim Kalin, said the country had offered to evacuate wounded Ukrainian soldiers and civilians by ship from Azovstal, according to official state broadcaster TRT.
