The report issued by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in early February, that is, before the start of the Russian military campaign, stated that “Moscow will remain an influential force and a formidable challenge to the United States, amid a changing geopolitical landscape over the next decade.”
The report, which was released to the media on Tuesday, assessed that “Russia will continue to pursue its interests in competitive, sometimes confrontational and provocative ways,” and said that it would “pressure to control Ukraine and other countries in its vicinity,” while “exploring the possibilities of achieving a more stable relationship with Washington.”
He added, “We estimate that Russia does not want direct conflict with American forces, but rather seeks a settlement with the United States regarding mutual non-interference in the internal affairs of the two countries, and American recognition of Russia’s alleged sphere of influence over a large part of the former Soviet Union,” according to the network. Fox News, an American news outlet.
He explained that Russian officials have long believed that the United States was “trying to undermine Russia and weaken its President Vladimir Putin” and “install Western-friendly regimes in the former Soviet Union and elsewhere.”
In the weeks leading up to the Russian attack on Ukraine, US President Joe Biden emphasized more than once that US forces would not fight Russia in Ukraine, but Washington deployed thousands of soldiers in Eastern European countries that are part of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
Washington also ruled out the possibility of imposing a no-fly zone over Ukraine after the start of the attack, in order to avoid a direct confrontation with Russia, which would widen the scope of the bloody conflict.
In the report, US intelligence officials predict that Russia continues to “prepare a military attack against Ukraine, as it massed more than 100,000 soldiers near the latter’s borders, including in Belarus and Russia-controlled Crimea, in addition to the separatist forces in eastern Ukraine” backed from Moscow.
He revealed that “Moscow will continue to use a set of tools to advance its own interests, or undermine the interests of the United States and its allies. These tools will mainly be military, security and intelligence, with the decline of the role of economic cooperation between the two giants.”
The United States and other Western powers had warned before the start of the attack of the deployment of tens of thousands of Russian soldiers on the borders of Ukraine, stressing that Moscow was preparing to invade its neighbor, while Russia denied this more than once.