The West would hamper Russia's progress in Ukraine.
The Kremlin estimated on Thursday that Western military and intelligence aid to kyiv is preventing Russia from “quickly” completing its offensive on its neighbor.
“The United States, the United Kingdom, NATO as a whole constantly share intelligence data with the Ukrainian armed forces.
Combined with the arms supplies (…), these actions do not allow the operation to be completed quickly,” the spokesman said, reacting to a publication published in the New York Times on Wednesday.
Humanitarian corridors near the Azovstal factory
According to this newspaper, citing anonymous sources within the American services, the information provided by the United States to the Ukrainian army made it possible to target several Russian generals near the front.
These Western actions “are however not able to prevent” that the objectives of the Russian offensive in Ukraine are fulfilled, underlined the spokesman of the Kremlin.
VIDEO.
“We lacked food”: in Mariupol, a hundred civilians evacuated from the Azovstal steelworks
He also assured that the Russian army respected the ceasefire it had announced the day before for Thursday to allow the evacuation of civilian refugees at the Azovstal factory site in Mariupol.
"The corridors are working there today," said Mr. Peskov, denying statements from kyiv that fighting between Russian and Ukrainian forces was underway for control of this steel plant.
No ongoing assault, Kremlin says
"The Ukrainian side and especially (the fighters) who have taken refuge on the site of the factory are known to fabricate a lot of lies", he assured.
According to the Kremlin, no assault is underway in Azovstal, Vladimir Putin having ordered to besiege the site to make the Ukrainian units give in, cut off from the world.
Read alsoWar in Ukraine: is the Azovstal site about to fall?
This resistance as well as civilians are concentrated in the vast network of underground galleries of the steelworks which are difficult to storm or destroy by bombardment.