Tallinn, Estonia —
Russian President Vladimir Putin is running out of time to win the war against Ukraine amid a stalemate on the battlefield and mounting problems at home, the head of European intelligence told CNN.
In an interview at the intelligence agency’s headquarters in Tallinn, Estonian Foreign Intelligence Director Kaupo Rosin said that in the next four or five months, Putin “may no longer be able to negotiate from a position of strength.”
Rozin elaborated that the combination of economic, military and social pressures facing Putin could force him to come to the negotiating table. “Time is not in Russia’s favor,” he said.
Estonia, a former Soviet republic, is now a NATO observation hub, and Rosin has spent much of his working life analyzing events within its domineering and hostile neighbor.
“We no longer hear about complete victory. People (in the Kremlin) realize that the situation on the battlefield in Ukraine is not going very well,” Rosin said, adding that Moscow was losing more personnel than it could replace.
In the two years ending in January, Russian forces advanced at an average speed of 70 meters (230 feet) a day, killing or wounding about 1,000 soldiers each day, according to analysts including the Washington, D.C.-based think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).
Even that small progress has stalled this year.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said last week that Russia’s military is “losing between 150,000 and 20,000 soldiers a month. They’re not wounded, they’re dead.”
According to Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense, 35,203 Russian soldiers were killed or seriously injured in April, the same as in the previous two months.
CNN cannot independently verify both losses. Moscow and Kiev have refrained from releasing official statistics.
Most of the casualties are caused by drones, in which both Ukraine and Russia have invested heavily. Rosin predicts that the shift to drone warfare will limit changes on the front.
Currently, both armies are “incapable of conducting large-scale mechanized breakthroughs” deep into the enemy’s rear, he said.
As the war progressed, the balance between the two countries in drone technology shifted back and forth. But Ukraine claims a new generation of interceptor missiles is softening the impact of Russian attacks on its cities.
“The proportion of Shahed drones shot down by interceptor drones has doubled in the past four months,” Ukrainian Defense Minister Mykhail Fedorov said this week.
If Russia wants to activate its operations and capture the rest of Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region (a publicly stated goal), Rozin said, the only option is “some kind of forced mobilization.”
“If Russia could mobilize hundreds of thousands more into the field, that would be a problem for (Ukraine),” Rozin said. But he added that such a move “would create further internal stability risks” for the Kremlin.
“They (the Kremlin) are very concerned about internal stability and are monitoring it very closely… This is not a decision they make lightly.”
Moscow ordered a partial mobilization of reservists in September 2022, seven months after the full-scale invasion began. The mobilization sparked a domestic backlash, including protests and a mass exodus of men seeking to avoid conscription.
Since then, recruitment efforts have relied on local governments offering large bonuses and other perks to enrollees, but as Russia’s economy has tightened, local governments’ ability to offer these incentives has shrunk.
Rosin said the cost of the war, international sanctions and the hugely successful Ukrainian operation against Russia’s vital oil industry are starting to take their toll.
Russia last week cut its growth forecast for this year from 1.3% to 0.4%, with Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak blaming labor shortages, excessive government spending and Western sanctions.
Rosin said Ukraine has caused “billions of dollars worth of damage to the energy sector” — Kiev’s growing fleet of long-range drones is targeting refineries, export hubs and pipelines hundreds of miles across Russia.
Referring to the recent spate of drone attacks on Moscow, Rozin said that for the Russian people, “war is coming, war is on our doorstep.”
But it is unclear what impact, if any, recent developments have had on Putin.
“Where is the moment when he understood the real situation? Because, again, the Ukraine issue is very ideological for him, so it probably won’t be easy for him to change his mind,” Rozin said.
Even if the Russian military is unable to advance, Rozin believes Putin will persevere.
They said: “They will try to make next winter at least as difficult, if not more difficult, for the Ukrainian people. If they cannot achieve their goal by military means, they will certainly try to achieve it by other means, in order to establish a pro-Russian government in Kiev.”
But paranoia is running high in Moscow, where rumors of a coup plot have tightened security around the president.
And for Russian society as a whole, Rosin said, soldiers returning from Ukraine are causing headaches because they are “bringing back violence, instability, psychological problems and crime.” Some reportedly join organized crime groups.
A study by think tank CSIS last year estimated that Russian soldiers returning from war killed or injured more than 1,000 people in Russia.
While dissatisfaction with the war may be growing as the economy begins to stagnate, Rosin sees little sign of unrest, given security authorities’ tight control over dissent.
“I really don’t think there will be a street revolution at the moment, but such systems can be very hollow inside and if something were to happen, it would happen very quickly and we would all be surprised,” he said.
