Ukrainian tankers near an undisclosed location on the front line in eastern Ukraine on November 28, 2022, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Yevhen Titov | Afp | Getty Images
The Director of National Intelligence said Saturday that US intelligence expects the pace of fighting in Ukraine to continue for the next several months and sees no evidence of a diminishing Ukrainian will to resist, despite attacks on the power grid and other critical winter infrastructure.
“We’re seeing kind of a lower tempo to the conflict already … and we expect that’s probably what we’ll see in the coming months,” Avril Haines said at the annual Reagan National Defense Forum in California.
She said both the Ukrainian and Russian militaries were looking to try to replenish and resupply to prepare for a post-winter counter-offensive, but there was a question about what that would look like. So or not. I think more optimistically for the Ukrainians in that time frame.”
Asked about the effects of the Russian attacks on Ukraine’s power grid and other civilian infrastructure, Haines said Moscow’s goal was in part to undermine Ukrainians’ will to resist, and added, “I think we don’t see any evidence of that being undermined now. At this point.”
She said Russia was also looking to influence Ukraine’s ability to pursue the conflict and added that Kyiv’s economy was suffering badly.
“Obviously, they can have an impact over time. And the amount of impact will depend on how much they follow, what they can do, the resilience of that critical infrastructure, and our ability to help them defend it.”
“Ukraine’s economy is suffering badly. It’s been devastated, and removing the grid will obviously have an effect on that as well.”
Haines said she believed Russian President Vladimir Putin was surprised his military had not accomplished more.
“I think he’s becoming more familiar with the challenges the military faces in Russia. But it’s still not clear to us that he has a full picture at this point of how challenging they are… We see shortages of ammunition, for morale, for supply issues, for logistics, And a whole series of concerns they face.”
Putin’s political goals in Ukraine did not appear to have changed, Haines said, but U.S. intelligence analysts thought he might be willing to scale back his military goals in the near term “on a temporary basis with the idea that he might then come back on this issue at a later time.”
She said Russia appeared to be using up its military stocks “very quickly”.
“It’s really unusual, and our sense is that they are not able to produce as much to spend domestically at this point,” she said.
“That’s why you’re effectively seeing them go to other countries to try and get ammunition…and we’ve indicated that in many respects their precision ammunition is running out much faster.”
The United States has “seen some movement” in ammunition supplies from North Korea, Haines said, “but it wasn’t much at this point.”
It said Iran had supplied unmanned aerial vehicles to Russia and that Moscow was looking for other types of precision munitions from Tehran, which would be “very worrying in terms of their capabilities”.
