US intelligence expects slower pace of Ukraine war to continue
A senior US intelligence official said that the slowed pace of fighting in Ukraine will continue for the next few months, and the US sees no sign that Ukraine’s will to stand up to Russia has changed, even though Russia has attacked Ukraine’s power grid and made it useless.
Avril Haines, the director of national intelligence in the Biden administration, also said on Saturday that she thought Russian President Vladimir Putin was surprised that his military hadn’t done better in its war on Ukraine.
The Ukrainian and Russian militaries will try to fix up and resupply in order to get ready for counterattacks after the winter, but she said it was unclear if the Kremlin could reach that goal.
“We have a lot of doubts about whether the Russians will really be willing to do that. “In that time frame, I’m more hopeful for the Ukrainians,” she said.
Haines said that Putin is starting to understand how hard things are for his military.
“I do think he is learning more about the problems the Russian military faces. But it’s not clear to us yet that he has a full picture of how hard it is for them… We see a lack of ammunition, problems with supplies and logistics, and a whole host of other problems,” she said.
The Atlantic Council, a US think tank, said recently that winter conditions in Ukraine could help Russian defensive strategies and allow the Russians to move newly mobilized forces to positions held east of the Dnipro River and near Crimea in the south.
“It may be Russia’s plan to force a standstill through the winter from more secure positions in order to start sending newly trained and equipped mobilization forces to the front as spring approaches,” the council said.
Haines said Putin’s political goals in Ukraine didn’t seem to have changed, but US intelligence analysts thought Putin might be willing to scale back his near-term military goals “temporarily with the idea that he might then come back to this issue at a later date.”
She also said that Russia seemed to be “quite quickly” getting rid of its military supplies.
“That’s why you see them basically going to other countries to try to get weapons… “We’ve told them that their precise weapons are running out much more quickly than we thought,” she said.
“It’s pretty amazing, and we think that they can’t make what they’re spending at this point with what they have at home.”
When asked about the effects of Russia’s attacks on Ukraine’s power grid and other civilian infrastructure, Haines said that one of Moscow’s goals was to make Ukrainians less likely to fight back. He added, “I don’t think we’re seeing any signs that that’s happening right now.”
Russia also wanted to hurt Ukraine’s ability to handle conflicts, and Kyiv’s economy was hurting a lot.
“Ukraine’s economy is in a lot of trouble. It’s been devastating.”
Victoria Nuland, the US undersecretary for political affairs, was in Kyiv on Saturday, where she met with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and other high-ranking Ukrainian officials. She told them that Putin wasn’t serious about peace talks, and they agreed.
“Everyone wants to do diplomacy, but you need a willing partner,” she told reporters.
She said, “It’s clear from the energy attacks, the rhetoric coming out of the Kremlin, and the general attitude that Putin is not sincere or ready for that.”
Biden said on Thursday that he was ready to talk to Putin about ending the war if the Russian leader was interested. But the idea quickly died when the Kremlin said that the West had to recognize Moscow’s claim that it had taken over four parts of Ukraine.
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