US intelligence: Putin has not abandoned plans to seize Ukraine – WP
Pravda Ukraine
US intelligence believes that Russian leader Vladimir Putin has not abandoned his desire to control Ukraine, despite the Trump administration’s efforts to stop the Russo-Ukrainian war.
Source: European Pravda, citing The Washington Post, which spoke to people familiar with classified US intelligence reports
Details: US intelligence reports, including those published earlier this month, cast doubt on whether Putin is willing to end the war against Ukraine.
One of the classified assessments, circulated among members of the Trump administration and dated 6 March, states that Putin remains determined to gain control over Kyiv.
Some current and former US officials told the publication that even if Putin agrees to a temporary truce, he will use it to regroup and rearm his forces. They believe that Russia is likely to violate the terms of an agreement by staging a provocation and blaming Ukraine for it.
Other officials say intelligence assessments remain cautious about the conditions under which Putin might agree to peace. However, they acknowledge that there are no signs that he has abandoned his demand to bring Ukraine into Russia’s sphere of influence.
It is unclear whether the intelligence report from 6 March was conveyed to Trump, but a source told The Washington Post that it concerns a type of information that is traditionally brought to the president’s attention.
According to another source, some US assessments of Putin’s intransigence appear to irritate Trump. Trump and his aides have recently raised the possibility of imposing new tough sanctions on Russia if it refuses to agree to end the war. They did not specify what these sanctions would entail, though on Wednesday 12 March Trump said they “could be devastating”.
Meanwhile, a European intelligence official, citing fresh intelligence data, stated that officials in Moscow consider Trump to be weak, lacking a fundamental set of principles and susceptible to manipulation.
The European intelligence representative noted that if a permanent ceasefire is reached, Moscow is likely to return to “hybrid” or non-military means of undermining Ukraine, which it employed before the full-scale invasion in 2022.
The official said these methods include economic and diplomatic coercion, infiltration of Ukrainian elites, business circles, security services and armed forces, as well as influence through the Russian church in Ukraine.
“The 2022 invasion happened because the hybrid tools did not bring results,” the European official stated.
Background:
- On 13 March, Putin responded cautiously to the US proposal for a ceasefire. Without rejecting it outright, he hinted that Moscow might put forward its own conditions for any agreement.
- Earlier, the administration of US President Donald Trump had not extended an exemption from the sanctions regime that previously allowed transactions with Russian banks related to energy payments.
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