US intelligence agency assessment: Russia-Ukraine war likely to continue

U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that Russia’s war in Ukraine is likely to drag on for some time, but that Russian forces are unlikely to be able to advance beyond eastern Ukraine in the near term, the top U.S. intelligence official said Wednesday.

Director of National Intelligence Javier Haines told a conference in Washington on export controls that Russia controls about 20 parts of Ukraine in a front stretching 1,100 kilometers.

But she said Ukrainian armed resistance in Russian-occupied areas is increasing, making it more difficult for Russia to push beyond Donbas. In the Donbas region, Russian forces have taken almost all of Luhansk, but less territory in neighbouring Donetsk. A peaceful solution is also unlikely, she said.

More likely, she said, is that the conflict, now in its fifth month, “will remain a drawn-out battle in which the Russians make incremental advances but no breakthroughs.”
“In short, the situation remains pretty grim,” Haynes said.

She says Russian President Vladimir Putin’s goal is still to take over much of Ukraine, but in the early days of the war, Russian forces failed to topple president Vladimir Zelensky’s government or capture the capital, Kiev.

On Wednesday, Russia launched a new attack. The mayor of Nikolayev, a river port near the Black Sea, said eight missiles landed, including one that hit an apartment building, killing four people and wounding five.

“There is fighting everywhere,” said Sergei Gaidai, the governor of Luhansk. He said Russian forces were taking Lichchansk building by building, just as they had done in neighboring Northern Donetsk.

Russian-backed officials say their security forces detained the mayor of Hersun after he refused to obey their orders. Russian officials there have begun preparing for a referendum to allow the region to join Russia.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Tuesday called Russia a “terrorist state” and urged a U.N. mission to investigate Monday’s deadly missile attack on a shopping mall in the city of Kremenchuk. The attack killed at least 18 civilians.

“How many of you would disagree that this is terrorism? “The Ukrainian leader said in a video address to the United Nations Security Council in New York. He was referring to Russian attacks on the shopping mall on Monday and on Ukrainian civilians and civilian facilities in recent days.

Zelensky said anywhere else in the world, any group that kills civilians as Russia has done in Ukraine would be considered terrorists.

“So, what is punished at the level of criminals and criminal organizations cannot go unpunished at the level of the state, which has become a terrorist state,” he said, referring to the Kremlin.

Russia’s envoy to the Council protested that Zelensky was allowed to address the council, saying it was a last minute arrangement without consultation with all council members.