Russia’s war in Ukraine is unlikely to end even if its forces succeed in taking the country’s eastern Donbass region, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines said on Tuesday, as President Putin bets on the West’s flagging resolve to pledge targets that stretch beyond the Donbass and across the coast into neighboring Moldova.
“We understand that President Putin is preparing for a protracted conflict in Ukraine, where he still intends to pursue goals beyond Donbass,” Haines told lawmakers at the Senate Armed Forces Committee during an annual hearing on global threats. She noted that entrenched military engagement means there is no “viable negotiating avenue” for Ukraine and Russia in the short term.
Haines said Putin likely believes his own country has a “greater ability and willingness to endure challenges” and “is likely to count on US and EU resolve to weaken as food shortages, inflation and energy prices worsen.” .
But the Russian leader’s ambitions may not match his army’s military capabilities, Haines said, raising the risk of a “more unpredictable and potentially escalating trajectory” in the conflict.
She said Russia’s ground combat forces have been “significantly reduced” and could take “years” to rebuild — which could prompt Putin to resort to asymmetric or “more drastic” measures, including “imposing martial law, rebalancing industrial production or… a potential “escalation of military actions” if he perceives that Russia is losing, Haines said.
A senior US defense official said on Tuesday that Russian forces in the south and east were “two weeks or more” behind schedule, describing their progress in Donbass as “very uneven and gradual”.
Haines also told the panel that Russia has likely held back from launching significant cyberattacks in Ukraine out of concern for their “collateral effects,” including hampering the Kremlin’s own ability to gather intelligence.
On Tuesday, the US, the European Union and the UK formally accused the Russian government of hacking satellite telecommunications modems in Ukraine and parts of Europe on February 24 in what the governments said was a coordinated attack linked to the Russian government invasion coincided.
Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said in a statement that this attack “had spillover effects on other European countries” that actually “disabled very small Aperture terminals in Ukraine and across Europe,” including “supporting tens of thousands of terminals outside Ukraine under.” wind turbines, among other things, and offer Internet services to private individuals.”
“This attack had outsized repercussions,” Haines told lawmakers. Russia “intended to focus on Ukrainian command and control, but ultimately they impacted a much broader set…of terminals outside of Ukraine, including in Europe,” she said.
Haines noted that the intelligence community assesses that Russia did not launch a large-scale cyberattack against the US during its invasion of Ukraine because “there has long been a threat of cyber escalation toward the United States.” But, she added, “That doesn’t mean they won’t attack at some point.”
In Ukraine, an escalation of the conflict could also take the form of attacks on shipments of Western security aid, retaliatory sanctions retaliation, or the staging of “another major nuclear exercise,” Haines testified, although intelligence agencies did not see any “imminent threat and potential” to Putin to use nuclear weapons.
Lt. Gen. Scott Berrier, director of the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency, told lawmakers the conflict “is at a kind of stalemate here.”
“I think I would characterize it as the Russians not winning and the Ukrainians not winning,” he said. Russia could mobilize additional reserve forces and bring thousands more soldiers into battle — but without a declaration of war, Berrier said, “I don’t see an outbreak on either side.”
Both intelligence officials said China’s leadership is closely following developments surrounding the Russia-Ukraine conflict, but current US assessments do not indicate an accelerated timeline for an attempted military takeover of Taiwan.
Ellee Watson contributed coverage.
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