U.S. intelligence expects the decline in hostilities in Ukraine to continue over the next several months and sees no sign of Ukraine’s will to persevere weakening despite attacks on its power grid and other critical winter infrastructure, the director of the U.S. National Intelligence Service said. Saturday, Reuters reports.

“We’re already seeing some slowdown … and that’s probably what we’ll see in the coming months,” Avril Haynes said at the annual Reagan National Defense Forum in California.

She said both the Ukrainian and Russian militaries would try to rebuild and resupply to prepare for a counteroffensive after winter, but there was a question mark over what that would look like, adding:

“Actually, we are quite skeptical that the Russians are ready to do this. I am more optimistic about Ukrainians.”

There are no signs that the determination of the Ukrainians is weakening

Asked about the consequences of Russian attacks on Ukraine’s power grid and other civilian infrastructure, Haynes said Moscow’s goal is, in particular, to undermine Ukrainians’ will to resist, adding:

“At this point, we don’t see any evidence that it was detonated.”

She said that Russia is also seeking to influence Ukraine’s ability to continue the conflict and added that Kyiv’s economy has been badly affected.

“Over time, it can obviously have an impact. How big the impact will be will depend on how much they want to do, what they’re able to do, the resilience of that critical infrastructure, our ability to help them protect it. Ukraine’s economy is suffering a lot. She was devastated.”

Putin was surprised by the weakness of his army

Haynes said she thinks Russian President Vladimir Putin was surprised his military didn’t accomplish more:

“I think that he is increasingly aware of the difficulties that the Russian army is facing. But we still don’t know if he has the full picture at this stage of the level of challenges he’s facing… we’re seeing ammunition shortages, morale, supply, logistics, a whole range of challenges that he’s facing.”

Haynes said Putin’s political goals in Ukraine do not appear to have changed, but U.S. intelligence analysts believe he may want to scale back his short-term military goals “temporarily, with the idea that he can come back to that issue later.”

Russia is rapidly depleting its military reserves

She said Russia appears to be depleting its military stockpile “quite quickly”: “It’s really quite unexpected and we don’t think they’re able to produce domestically what they’re consuming at this stage,” she said.

“That’s why you see them just going to other countries to try to get munitions … and we’ve shown that their precision munitions run out much faster in many ways.”

Haynes said the United States has “noticed some changes” in North Korea’s munitions shipments, “but not significant at this stage.”

She said Iran had supplied Russia with drones and that Moscow was demanding other types of precision munitions from Tehran that were “very worrying because of their capabilities.”