Russian President Vladimir Putin most likely sees the idea of prolonging the war in Ukraine as his best chance to achieve a lasting victory, explained a lead Biden Biden administration spy chief as of this past Wednesday.
Well over a year after Russia kicked off its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Avril Haines, the Director of National Intelligence, has elected to testify to the Senate Intelligence Committee that there is a “grinding attritional war in which neither side has a definitive military advantage” over the other.
“If Russia does not initiate a mandatory mobilization and identify substantial third-party ammunition supplies, it will be increasingly challenging for them to sustain even the current level of offensive operations in the coming months, and consequently they may fully shift to holding and defending the territories they now occupy,” expressed Haines.
“In short, we do not see the Russia military recovering enough this year to make major territorial gains,” Haines went on, speaking directly for the U.S. intelligence community. “But Putin most likely calculates that time works in his favor and that prolonging the war including with potential pauses in the fighting may be his best remaining pathway to eventually securing Russian strategic interests in Ukraine, even if it takes years.”
Russia started what it labeled a “special military operation” in Ukraine on February 24, 2022, in a war that has led to well over tens of thousands of deaths and the displacement of multiple millions of people. Near the start of the war, Russian forces were able to take just about a quarter of Ukraine, but the Ukrainian defense forces were able to fend off the rapid advance by receiving help from a coalition of countries which were led by the United States that has support to the tune of billions of dollars in lethal aid to Ukraine and has levied waves of cantions targeting Russia.
Despite the presence of bipartisan support for Ukraine, a number of Republicans in Congress are becoming more and more eager to stop the flow of aid headed to Ukraine. A group of House Republicans has recently put forth a new non-binding resolution that is attempting to call for the immediate stopping of all financial support from the U.S. and the signing of a peace agreement between the two warring countries.
Haines chose to go in front of the Senate this past Wednesday along with a number of other intelligence community leaders such as both FBI Director Christopher Wray and CIA Director William Burns, in order to testify about their new global threat assessment.
The most recent version of the assessment, which is put out on a yearly basis, claimed that there is “real potential for Russia’s military failures in the war to hurt Russian President Vladimir Putin’s domestic standing and thereby trigger additional escalatory actions by Russia in an effort to win back public support.”
