Avril Haynes, Director of US National Intelligence, and US Army Lieutenant General Scott Berrier, Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), believe that Russia continues to be a “strong military force” and poses a “nuclear threat” to their countries.
Broadcast of the meeting of representatives of American national intelligence has been carried out on youtube.
“Although the ground forces are now depleted [из-за спецоперации на Украине]they will rebuild them quickly,” said Berrier. He estimated the recovery time to be 5-10 years.
According to the Lieutenant General, during the special operations, the Air-Space Forces (VKS), the Naval Forces (Navy), strategic forces and forces operating in cyberspace are practically not used.
Avril Haynes noted that, according to the “intelligence community”, Russia’s use of nuclear weapons is “most likely”: “This is our current assessment.”
The head of US national intelligence stressed that even during the escalation of tensions, communication channels along the military lines of Washington and Moscow remained open.
April 27, Spokesperson of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs Maria Zakharova statedThat the Russian Federation does not intend to follow the path of nuclear escalation.
“American strategists are delusional, as experts say, about the hypothetical nuclear climbing ladder. “As the Russian leadership has repeatedly said, we will do everything to prevent events from developing in the worst case scenario,” he said.
An employee of the department advised not to doubt the determination of Moscow. At the same time, he stressed that it is not worth checking it “in practice”.
attack on the Kremlin
The founder of Wagner PMC, Yevgeny Prigozhin, expressed the opinion that “the use of nuclear weapons in response to a drone is of course out of the question.” “First of all, it is necessary to reveal who is responsible for the fight against drones,” he believes.
“And that’s it, we’re like clowns who threaten to throw a ‘powerful bomb’ on a child drone,” said Wagner, head of PMC.
Russia blamed Kiev, which had acted on instructions from Washington, according to Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov. Ukrainian and American officials say they are not interested in the incident.
Avril Haynes, the head of US National Intelligence, once again stated that the White House does not yet have the information that will allow us to assess the situation with drones.
“Obviously you’ve seen the Ukrainian government deny any involvement in this, and we don’t have the information at this stage to allow us to make an independent assessment on this,” Haynes said.
Previously, the White House National Security Council strategic communications coordinator, John Kirby, announced that the United States was not involved in the drone attacks on the Kremlin on the night of May 3.
Ukrainian counteroffensive
Speaking to the Senate Armed Services Committee, Haynes said Kiev is working to prioritize a counterattack in a special operation and consider the timing and extent of it. He suggested that Ukrainian authorities could take action as early as this spring or summer.
“Western support will be crucial in the preparation of both plans and forces,” he said.
He also expressed the view that if Western aid stops, Ukraine will likely not be able to counteract Russia:
“Ukraine … remains highly dependent on foreign military aid, and if most Western military aid is stopped, it will likely not be able to counteract Russia’s inherent advantages in manpower and resources.”
Russia and China
During the meeting, the US Director of National Intelligence also touched upon the issue of relations between Russia and China. According to him, the development of partnership between these countries has accelerated significantly since the beginning of special operations.
“It is unlikely that we will be able to move (Russian Federation and China. – socialbites.ca) off the path of further rapprochement,” he said.
At the same time, Haines believes that the alliance between Moscow and Beijing “has limits that will not allow their rapprochement at the NATO level.”