The US intelligence community assesses that it will take “years” for the Russian military to recover from the damage it has sustained in carrying out its war in Ukraine, according to the director for national intelligence Avril Haines.
“Their ground forces have now been degraded so much that we expect it will take years for them to recover in many ways,” she told a conference in Washington, DC on Wednesday.
That could push Russia to become more reliant on “asymmetric tools” such as cyberattacks, efforts to try to control energy, or even nuclear weapons in order to project “power and influence,” she said.
Grim assessment: Haines said Russia is beginning to turn its focus to the Donetsk region. The intelligence community believes Russia will struggle to overtake the eastern province — as it is close to achieving in neighboring Luhansk — but that Russian President Vladimir Putin likely believes time is on Moscow’s side because he thinks the West will eventually tire of supporting Ukraine.
“The consensus is that the war in Ukraine will go on for an extended period of time,” Haines said, acknowledging the US assessment of the situation is “grim.”
Three scenarios: Haines said the intelligence community sees three likely scenarios that could come into focus in the coming weeks and months.
“The most likely is that the conflict remains a grinding struggle in which the Russians make incremental gains, but no breakthrough,” she said. Under that scenario, the Russian military will have secured Luhansk and much of Donetsk by the fall, as well as solidifying control of southern Ukraine.
The other scenarios are that Russia could achieve a breakthrough and refocus on Kyiv or Odesa; or, finally, that Ukraine could stabilize the front line and begin to make smaller gains, likely in Kherson or elsewhere in southern Ukraine.
