Putin's spokesperson denies expecting swift victory in Ukraine, despite analysts saying that's exactly what Russia expected

• Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin's spokesperson, said Russia's invasion of Ukraine was going as planned.
• He told CNN on Tuesday that Russia never expected it to take "a couple of days."

Dmitry Peskov, Russian President Vladimir Putin's spokesperson, denied that Russia had expected a swift victory over Ukraine and said the invasion was going as planned.

Speaking with CNN's Christiane Amanpour on Tuesday, Peskov said Russia's invasion was on schedule, despite evidence that it had ground to a halt.

"Russia's special military operation is going on strictly in accordance with the plans and with purposes that were established beforehand," Peskov said.

He said that from the beginning, no one had expected it to take "a couple of days."

—Christiane Amanpour (@amanpour) March 22, 2022

Peskov's attempts to spin the invasion as a success run counter to multiple assessments by Western military and intelligence officials, as well as independent analysts, who have said that Russia expected a swift victory. Russian state media also appeared to have planned for a short, decisive campaign.

Bill Burns, the director of the CIA, told Congress in recent testimony that Putin had expected Ukraine to fall in two days.

Western allies also appeared to have limited confidence in Ukraine's ability to endure. The US and other allies evacuated their embassies from Kyiv in the run-up to the invasion. Although the city had endured shelling and fierce fighting around its outskirts, it was still firmly in Ukrainian hands four weeks into the war.

The US also offered to evacuate Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy from Kyiv at the start of the war, appearing to fear for his life. Zelenskyy instead remained in the city and has continued to appear in public.

Overall, the Russian invasion has stalled in the face of tough Ukrainian resistance, with troops bogged down amid logistical problems and sustaining high casualty rates. Russia has yet to take control of a major Ukrainian city, and it has not established air dominance.

Russia has targeted civilians as its invasion has stalled, and President Joe Biden has warned it may resort to the use of chemical weapons to terrorize Ukraine into submission.