Russian president Vladimir Putin still wants to seize most of Ukraine despite his weakened troops, according to US intelligence officials.
The consensus among US spy agencies was that the war in Europe will grind on “for an extended period of time”, director of national intelligence Avril Haines said on Wednesday.
Outlining their assessment of the over four-month war, she said: “The picture remains pretty grim and Russia’s attitude toward the West is hardening.”
“We perceive a disconnect between Putin’s near-term military objectives in this area and his military’s capacity, a kind of mismatch between his ambitions and what the military is able to accomplish,” she told a US Commerce Department conference.
US intelligence agencies believe Russia might make “incremental gains, with no breakthrough”, and that it would take years for Moscow to rebuild its forces.
“During this period, we anticipate that they’re going to be more reliant on asymmetric tools that they have, such as cyber attacks, efforts to control energy, even nuclear weapons in order to try to manage and project power and influence globally,” Ms Haines said.
Ms Haines’s comments also suggested that arms supplied by the US and other countries to Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky might not make them put an end to Russia’s war anytime soon.
The Ukrainian president, who addressed G7 leaders on Monday, has urged world leaders to help them put an end to war by the end of this year.
Meanwhile, Amnesty International’s investigative report has said that the Russian bombing of a theatre in Mariupol in March was a “clear war crime.”
The report details how Russian forces “likely deliberately targeted the theatre despite knowing hundreds of civilians were sheltering there on 16 March, making the attack a clear war crime.”
