Biden: Putin has no exit strategy
President attacks Kremlin chief as US spies warn Moscow could go nuclear if it faces ‘existential’ threat
VLADIMIR Putin is a man without a plan for Ukraine as well as a major danger to the West, Joe Biden declared yesterday.
The US president said that he was trying to work out how to respond to a ‘very calculating’ adversary who ‘doesn’t have a way out’.
His spy agency officials in Washington are now warning that the Kremlin might simply wait for Ukraine’s allies to lose resolve in a protracted conflict.
Avril Haines, head of US National Intelligence, also suggested Putin might resort to ‘drastic means’ if he felt the war was being lost.
‘President Putin is planning for a prolonged conflict, probably counting on US and European resolve to weaken,’ she told a US congressional hearing.
‘Drastic means and ad hoc decision making could include martial law and escalatory military actions. Most likely flashpoints are around increased Russian efforts to interdict Western security assistance. In the months ahead the conflict could continue on an escalatory and increasingly uncertain trajectory.’
She said Russia wanted to seize more territory along Ukraine’s southern coast but could not do so without mobilising tens of thousands of reservists. Her assessment was that there was no end to the conflict in sight because both sides believed they could make progress on the battlefield.
Ms Haines said Putin could turn to his oft-threatened nuclear arsenal only if he saw ‘an existential threat to Russia’.
‘We do think that could be the case in the event that he perceives that he is losing the war in Ukraine, and that Nato in effect is either intervening or about to intervene in that context,’ she told the hearing.
But, she added, the world would probably have some warning first: ‘There are a lot of things that he would do in the context of escalation before he would get to nuclear weapons, and also that he would be likely to engage in some signalling beyond what he’s done thus far.’
After a succession of failures, Russia’s armed forces are struggling to take any new territory, much to the frustration of Putin’s cronies in the state-controlled media.
Alexsandr Sladkov, a Kremlin propagandist, criticised Russia’s approach to the military campaign in a video released on social media.
He expressed despair at the failure to ‘push back’ the Ukrainians in the Donbas, the eastern region of Ukraine. He also attacked the military leadership, suggesting the operation was ‘shamefully indecisive’. And Vladimir Solovyov, another prominent Putin puppet, moaned about the ‘shameful’ length of time it was taking for weapons to reach the front. Guests on state TV talk shows have complained that men are being sent into battle ‘with weapons of yesteryear’.
A former member of the feared Wagner mercenary group yesterday claimed he turned down the call to fight in Ukraine because Russia had underestimated the enemy. Marat Gabidullin said comrades expected to face a ragtag bunch of fighters. ‘I told them “Guys, that’s a mistake”,’ he said. ‘They were caught completely by surprise that the Ukrainian army resisted so fiercely and that they faced the actual army.’
Professor Michael Clarke, formerly of the Royal United Services Institute think-tank, said: ‘President Putin realises his military options are limited. So he did not say in his Victory Day speech what else he might achieve. He may be softening up the Russian public.
‘Russia’s offensive in the Donbas is building and is likely to peak in
‘Planning for a long conflict’
the next few weeks. We will know a lot more by the end of May. Right now the Ukrainians are pushing back the Russians in the north and holding them in the south.’
A senior US defence official told reporters last night Russia was at least two weeks behind on its invasion schedule.
Kyiv yesterday hailed what it said was Berlin’s change of stance on a Russian oil embargo and on supplying arms. The mood between the two capitals changed yesterday when German foreign minister Annalena Baerbock’s visited Bucha, a town outside Kyiv where Russians have been accused of war crimes.
‘I would like to thank Germany for changing its position on a number of issues,’ said her Ukrainian opposite number, Dmytro Kuleba.
He added: ‘I want to emphasise that Ukraine’s membership in the EU is a matter of war and peace in Europe. One of the reasons that this war started is that Putin was convinced that Europe doesn’t need Ukraine.’