A house burns after a Russian attack in Kherson, Ukraine, on Dec. 3.Evgeniy Maloletka/The Associated Press
The head of U.S. intelligence says fighting in Russia’s war in Ukraine is running at a “reduced tempo” and suggests Ukrainian forces could have brighter prospects in coming months.
Avril Haines alluded to past allegations by some that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s advisers could be shielding him from bad news – for Russia – about war developments, and said he “is becoming more informed of the challenges that the military faces in Russia.”
“But it’s still not clear to us that he has a full picture of at this stage of just how challenged they are,” Ms. Haines, the U.S. director of national intelligence, said Saturday at the Reagan National Defense Forum in Simi Valley, Calif.
She said her team was “seeing a kind of a reduced tempo already of the conflict” and looking ahead expects both sides will look to refit, resupply, and reconstitute for a possible Ukrainian counteroffensive in the spring.
“But we actually have a fair amount of skepticism as to whether or not the Russians will be in fact prepared to do that,” Ms. Haines said. “And I think more optimistically for the Ukrainians in that time frame.”
On Sunday, the British Ministry of Defence, in its latest intelligence estimate, pointed to new signs from an independent Russian media outlet that public support in Russia for the military campaign was “falling significantly.”
Meduza said it obtained a recent confidential opinion survey conducted by the Federal Protection Service, which is in charge of guarding the Kremlin and providing security to top government officials.
The survey, commissioned by the Kremlin, found that 55 per cent of respondents backed peace talks with Ukraine while 25 per cent wanted the war to go on. The report didn’t mention the margin of error.
Levada Center, Russia’s top independent pollster, found in a similar poll carried out in November that 53 per cent of respondents supported peace talks, 41 per cent spoke in favour of continuing the fight, and 6 per cent were undecided. It said that poll of 1,600 people had a margin of error of no more than 3.4 per cent.
The British Defense Ministry noted that “despite the Russian authorities’ efforts to enforce pervasive control of the information environment, the conflict has become increasingly tangible for many Russians” since Mr. Putin in September ordered a “partial mobilization” of reservists to bolster his forces in Ukraine.
“With Russia unlikely to achieve major battlefield successes in the next several months, maintaining even tacit approval of the war amongst the population is likely to be increasingly difficult for the Kremlin,” the British ministry said.
In recent weeks, Russia’s military focus has been on striking Ukrainian infrastructure nationwide, pressing an offensive in the Donetsk region city of Bakhmut and shelling sites in the city of Kherson, which Ukrainian forces liberated last month after an eight-month Russian occupation.