She probably got a good talking to from the White House after this
U.S. intel chief warns of ‘devastating’ impact of Russian missile attacks
President Biden’s chief intelligence adviser raised fresh concerns Thursday night that Russian missile attacks are having a “devastating” impact on the Ukrainian economy, noting that the war has already reduced the country’s gross domestic product by nearly one-third.
Wait, if the war is as damaging as we’ve been told, how is their GDP only down one-third? Why does the U.S. taxpayer need to be dumping tens of billions every couple months into Ukraine?
Speaking during a question-and-answer session at the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines said U.S. officials so far “do not see any reduction in the resolve of the Ukrainians to fight this war.”
But at the same time, Haines seemed to offer a more sobering view of the conflict than most Biden administration officials have shared to date. She said the “brutal” missile attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure are taking a far bigger toll than has been publicly understood.
Haines touted the administration’s declassification of intelligence last year that revealed Russia’s intentions to invade Ukraine during a period when European allies were skeptical that President Vladimir Putin would actually go through with it. And she said the U.S. has continued to provide important tactical battlefield intelligence to the Ukrainian military.
Well, with Trump in the White House Putin wasn’t making moves. Biden comes in and shows his weakness, especially with his disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal, and Putin is emboldened.
But she also described the war as having devolved into a “grinding conflict” where the movements are in “hundreds of meters.” The frontlines, she noted, have mostly remained “relatively static” even while the Russians press an offensive in the eastern Donbas region in which they have made “very incremental progress.”
So, essentially, the Biden position that Ukraine is slowly winning is a load of mule fritters. It looks like Putin is trying to grind it out and not destroy everything in the country they’re looking to take over. Putin knows that the West will only back Ukraine for so long before the citizens tire of funding this.
Read: U.S. Intel Chief Gives Pessimistic View Of Ukraine War »