The U.S. spy chief said Russian President Vladimir Putin still seeks to control swaths of Ukraine beyond the eastern region known as the Donbas, after local authorities said Russian missiles struck the port city of Odessa overnight, killing one person and wounding others.
The Russian military’s pullback to eastern and southern Ukraine after failing to rapidly take Kyiv is likely “only a temporary shift to regain the initiative,” U.S. Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines told lawmakers Tuesday. U.S. spy agencies, she said, see a lengthy war of attrition that is unlikely to be settled by the current fighting in eastern Ukraine, and little chance of a near-term negotiated solution.
