The United States assesses that Russia is suffering failure rates as high as 60 percent for some of the precision-guided missiles it is using to attack Ukraine, three US officials with knowledge of the intelligence told Reuters.

The disclosure could help explain why Russia has failed to achieve what most would consider basic objectives since its invasion a month ago, such as neutralising Ukraine's air force, despite the apparent strength of its military against Ukraine's much smaller armed forces.

The US officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the information, did not provide evidence to support the assessment and did not disclose what precisely was driving high Russian missile failure rates.

Reuters was unable to independently verify the figures...