Russian President Vladimir Putin is running out of time to win his war against Ukraine amid a battlefield stalemate and growing internal problems, he told CNN a European intelligence chief.
In the next four or five months, Putin “may no longer be able to negotiate from a position of strength,” said Kaupo Rosin, head of Estonia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, in an interview at the agency’s headquarters in Tallinn.
Rosin detailed a combination of economic, military and social pressures facing Putin that could force him to the negotiating table. “Time is not on Russia’s side,” he said.
A former Soviet republic, Estonia today acts as a NATO observation outpost, and Rosin spends much of his work analyzing events in the neighboring country, considered hostile and dominant.
“I no longer hear talk about total victory. People (in the Kremlin) recognize that the situation on the Ukrainian battlefield is not going very well,” Rosin said, adding that Moscow is losing more men than it can recruit.
In the two years through January, Russian forces advanced an average of 70 meters a day, with about 1,000 soldiers killed or wounded daily, according to analysts at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) think tank and other sources.
Even these minimal advances have practically stopped this year.
The Russians are “losing between 15,000 and 20,000 soldiers killed per month. Not wounded, killed,” US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said last week.
In April, 35,203 Russian soldiers were killed or seriously injured, according to Ukraine’s Defense Ministry, a similar number to that recorded in each of the previous two months.
A CNN cannot independently verify losses on both sides. Moscow and Kiev avoid releasing official figures.
Most of the casualties are being caused by drones, a technology in which . Rosin predicts this shift to drone warfare will limit changes on the front lines.
Currently, both sides are “unable to carry out a major mechanized breakthrough” in deep areas of the enemy rear, he said.
The balance between the two sides on drone technology changed several times throughout the war. But Ukraine says a new generation of interceptor drones is reducing the impact of Russian attacks on its cities.
“The proportion of Shahed drones shot down by interceptor drones has doubled in the last four months,” Ukrainian Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov said this week.
Another mobilization?
If Russia wants to revitalize its campaign and capture the rest of eastern Donbas — its publicly stated goal — the only option would be “some kind of forced mobilization,” according to Rosin.
“If the Russians were able to mobilize a few hundred thousand more people to the battlefield, that would be a problem (for Ukraine),” Rosin said. But such a move “would create additional internal stability risks” for the Kremlin, he added.
“They (the Kremlin) are very concerned about internal stability, monitoring this very carefully… This is not a decision they would make easily.”
Moscow has ordered a partial mobilization of reservists in September 2022, seven months after the full-scale invasion began. The move sparked an internal backlash, including protests and a large exodus of men trying to avoid conscription.
Since then, recruitment has depended on regional governments offering high bonuses and other benefits to volunteers, but the ability to maintain these incentives has diminished as the Russian economy comes under pressure.
The cost of the war, and a largely successful Ukrainian campaign against the Russian oil industry are beginning to have an impact, Rosin said.
Last week, Russia cut its economic growth forecast for this year to 0.4% from 1.3%, with Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak attributing the drop to labor shortages, excessive government spending and Western sanctions.
Ukraine has caused “billions and billions of dollars in damage to the energy sector,” according to Rosin, while Kiev, export hubs and pipelines hundreds of miles into Russia.
Commenting on a recent wave of drone strikes against Moscow, Rosin stated that “war is coming, war is at home” for the Russians.
However, it is unclear how recent events have influenced Putin — if at all.
“What is the moment when he understands the real situation? Because, again, the Ukraine issue is very ideological for him, so it’s probably not easy to change his mind,” Rosin said.
Even if Russian troops fail to advance, Rosin believes Putin will continue to insist.
They “will try to make the next winter for the Ukrainians at least as difficult as it was this year, if not more difficult. If he does not achieve his goal by military means, he will certainly try to achieve it by other means, to have a pro-Russian government in Kiev.”
But there is a growing sense of paranoia in Moscow, with .
And in Russian society as a whole, soldiers returning from Ukraine are creating problems, “bringing back violence, instability, psychological problems and criminality,” Rosin said. Some end up joining organized crime groups, he added.
A CSIS study last year estimated that Russian soldiers returning from war killed or injured more than a thousand people inside Russia.
While there may be an increase in complaints about the war as economic stagnation sets in, Rosin sees few signs of popular unrest due to the security services’ tight control over any dissent.
“I don’t really see a revolution on the streets right now, but sometimes these systems are very hollow inside, and if something happens, it will happen very quickly, and we will all be surprised,” he said.
