Ukrainian capital Kyiv could fall within days, believe US intelligence officials: Report

Sources familiar with the latest intelligence regarding the ongoing conflict in Ukraine believe that US intelligence officials are concerned that Kyiv could fall under Russian control within days, CNN has reported.

The sources said that the US had anticipated before the invasion took place that the Ukrainian capital would be overrun within one to four days of a Russian attack.

Russian forces have moved to within 20 miles of Kyiv, senior administration officials told lawmakers on Capitol Hill on Thursday night, as per the CNN report.

Officials believe Russia has been facing stiffer resistance from Ukrainian forces than it anticipated, according to sources. But officials in that briefing to Capitol Hill declined to say whether they believed Kyiv would fall.

CNN previously reported that a senior US defense official said on Thursday that Russia was “making a move on Kyiv.”

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 Putin will seek to occupy and hold Ukrainian territory afterwards, one of the sources familiar with the intelligence told CNN.

Earlier in the day, pedestrians ran for safety as small arms fire and explosions erupted in the Obolonsky district in Kyiv's north. Larger blasts could be heard in the city centre, where residents endured a first tense night under curfew and the sounds of bombing, news agency AFP reported.

Russian president Vladimir Putin has called on the Ukrainian army to overthrow the country's leadership whom he described as "terrorists" and "a gang of drug addicts and neo-Nazis".

Addressing the Ukrainian military in a televised address, he urged them to "take power in your own hands." "It seems like it will be easier for us to agree with you than this gang of drug addicts and neo-Nazis," he said, referring to leadership in Kyiv led by President Volodymyr Zelensky, who is Jewish.

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky has vowed to stay in Kyiv as his troops battled Russian invaders in the biggest attack on a European state since World War Two. "(The) enemy has marked me down as the number one target," Zelensky warned in a video message. My family is the number two target. I will stay in the capital. My family is also in Ukraine," he said.