UK Spy Chief: Russia Sputtering In Ukraine

Russia's military is expected to initiate some type of operational pause in Ukraine in the coming weeks, allowing Kyiv a critical opportunity to strike back, Britain's spy director said on Thursday (early Friday, July 22, 2022, in Manila), according to Reuters' Phil Stewart.

Photo Insert: The State Office in Washington D.C., United States (placed in the photo)

Richard Moore, the chief of the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), also claimed that roughly 15,000 Russian forces had been killed so far in the country's war in Ukraine, adding that that was "probably a conservative estimate." Ukraine stated that almost 39,000 Russian servicemen had been slain in Russia's February 24, 2022 battle.

"I think they're about to run out of steam," Moore said at the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado, adding that the Russian military would struggle to deliver manpower and materiel in the coming weeks.

"They will have to pause in some way, and that will give the Ukrainians opportunities to strike back."

Moore claimed that the toll from Russian President Vladimir Putin's war in Ukraine was primarily felt in poorer, rural regions, and that Putin was not yet recruiting forces for the battle from middle-class neighborhoods in St. Petersburg or Moscow.

"These are poor kids from rural parts of Russia. They're from blue-collar towns in Siberia. They are disproportionately from ethnic minorities. And these are his cannon fodder," Moore stated.

Nearly five months after Russia invaded Ukraine, Kiev expects that Western armaments, particularly longer-range missiles such as U.S. HIMARS, which Kyiv has recently deployed, would allow it to launch a counterattack and retake Russian-occupied territory in the coming weeks.

Moore emphasized the need of Ukraine demonstrating that the war was winnable, both to maintain high Ukrainian morale and to reinforce the West's resolve as concerns about European energy shortages during the approaching winter grow.

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