Russia tries to rebound in Ukraine as prospects for victory fade
That assessment is shared by an array of observers, including Western intelligence officials and independent analysts who have tracked the war closely. Russia, said Mikk Marran, director general of the Estonian Foreign Intelligence Service, is losing in Ukraine militarily, politically and morally.
“When we look at the battlefield, Russia’s conventional capacity is already overstretched,” Marran said. “The losses in Russian manpower and equipment are not sustainable at the same operations tempo that we have seen so far.”
Unless Russia launches a full-scale mobilization of its military, Marran said, it has “no remedy in sight.” And while it appears that “some sense of reality has kicked in” among Russian military leaders, Putin himself remains intent on controlling everything from the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine to the western port city of Odessa and Transnistria, a breakaway republic in neighboring Moldova.
“We might be seeing a continuing military campaign that is, to a degree, detached from what is realistic, from what might be called smart or feasible in the long term,” Marran said. The Estonians had long predicted, even before the invasion, that Russia would face significant resistance from the Ukrainians.
As the war grinds on and Russia’s battlefield gains remain “uneven” and “incremental,” according to the Pentagon’s latest assessment, several of its high-ranking commanders have been sacked. Among them, according to the British Ministry of Defense, are Lt. Gen. Serhiy Kisel, who presided over the 1st Guards Tank Army’s failed effort to capture the northeastern city of Kharkiv, and Vice Adm. Igor Osipov, who was in charge of Russia’s Black Sea fleet when Ukrainian forces sank its flagship, the Moskva. The humiliating blow to Russia’s navy was carried out using the Neptune anti-ship missiles that Ukraine makes. Since then, officials in Kyiv have stepped up their requests for similar weapons from Western partners.
Citing the latest U.S. intelligence assessments of the war, a senior Defense Department official, speaking on the condition of anonymity under ground rules set by the Pentagon, affirmed that “Russian commanders at various levels have been relieved…
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