“The Russians are about to run out of steam,” Richard Moore, the Chief of the UK Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), said today, claiming that the Ukrainians could move to a counter-offensive in the coming weeks. Meanwhile, the defenders are successfully repelling Russian attacks in the Donbas.
“I think they [the Russians] are about to run out of steam. I think our assessment is that the Russians will increasingly find it difficult to supply manpower material over the next few weeks. They will have to pause in some way, and that will give the Ukrainians opportunities to strike back,” Moore stated at the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado.
He added that Ukraine needs to show that it is capable of carrying out a counter-attack and that this war is winnable for it because of the morale of Ukrainian forces, as well as for the rest of Europe.
Moore also confirmed assessments expressed on Wednesday by CIA chief William Burns, who said that Russia had lost 15,000 troops in Ukraine so far, while another 45,000 had been wounded. He agreed with the CIA chief that there was no evidence that Russian President Vladimir Putin was seriously ill.
The MI6 chief said Britain and the rest of the West had halved the Russian service’s spying capabilities with the expulsion of more than 400 Russian intelligence officers working under diplomatic cover.