WASHINGTON, Dec 3 (Portal) – The US intelligence agency expects the reduced pace of fighting in Ukraine to continue over the next few months, and sees no sign of a reduced will to resist despite attacks on its power grid and other critical winter infrastructure Ukraine This was said by the director of the National Intelligence Service on Saturday.
“We’re already seeing some sort of reduced pace of conflict … and we expect that likely will continue to be the case for months to come,” Avril Haines said at the annual Reagan National Defense Forum in California.
She said both the Ukrainian and Russian militaries would try to prepare for a post-winter counteroffensive, but it was questionable what that would look like, adding:
“We’re actually quite skeptical about whether the Russians will be ready for that or not. I think rather optimistic for the Ukrainians in this time frame.”
Asked about the impact of Russian attacks on Ukraine’s power grid and other civilian infrastructure, Haines said Moscow’s aim is in part to undermine the Ukrainians’ will to resist, adding: “I don’t think we see any evidence at this point that this is being undermined.” at this point.”
She said Russia is also trying to hamper Ukraine’s ability to pursue conflicts, adding that Kyiv’s economy has suffered badly.
“Obviously it can have repercussions over time. How severe the impact will be depends on how much they track, what they are capable of, the resilience of that critical infrastructure, our ability to help them defend it. “
“The economy of Ukraine is suffering very badly. It’s been devastating and…obviously the grid shutdown will have an impact on that as well.”
Haines said she thinks Russian President Vladimir Putin was surprised his military hadn’t accomplished more.
“I think he’s becoming better and better informed about the challenges facing the military in Russia. But it’s still not clear to us that at this point he has a full picture of how challenged they are… we see shortages of ammo, for morale, supply issues, logistics, a whole host of concerns they face.
Haines said Putin’s political goals in Ukraine did not appear to have changed, but US intelligence analysts thought he was prepared to “temporarily scale back” his short-term military goals with the idea that he could then come back to this issue at a later date .”
She said Russia appears to be using up its military stocks “quite quickly”.
“It’s really quite exceptional, and we feel like they don’t have the ability to produce what they’re consuming at this stage,” she said.
“That’s why you see them effectively going to other countries to try and get ammo… and we pointed out that in many ways their precision ammo runs out much quicker.”
Haines said the United States had seen “some movement” in munitions shipments from North Korea, “but it wasn’t much at the time.”
She said Iran has been supplying Russia with drones and Moscow is looking for other types of precision munitions from Tehran, which is “very concerning in terms of their capacity”.
Reporting by David Brunnstrom, Michael Martina and Eric Beech; Edited by Daniel Wallis
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