Putin Thinks Smaller

U.S. officials say captured leader's war ambitions documents show the Russian and options-have shrunk

- WILLIAM M. ARKIN

UKRAINE

THE PENTAGON ANNOUNCED ON MAY 13 THAT Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin spoke to his Russian counterpart Sergei Shoigu for the first time in 84 days, urging "an immediate ceasefire." Austin's call, U.S. government sources tell Newsweek, came after high-level White House deliberations where President Joe Biden and his national security advisers discussed a new intelligence assessment of Russia's effort and the implication of Finland and Sweden's announcements that they would seek NATO membership.

"There's a general sense growing that Putin indeed is in a corner, not just in Ukraine where his army is failing, but also in facing an existential threat from Europe, now even more united because of his missteps," says a U.S. senior intelligence official who has been involved in the deliberations.

U.S. intelligence now believes, based on new captured war plans and documents, that despite earlier statements, Russia has now backed away from any grand plan to take all of southern Ukraine.

"Odessa [Ukraine's third-largest city] is safe from Putin's army and from coastal landings," says the intelligence official who worked on the reassessment. "The Russians seem to have abandoned the notion of advancing on Mykolaiv," the official adds, while offensive efforts on the west bank of the Dnieper have been slowed by Ukrainian defenses and ubiquitous logistics problems.

"It's all artillery and missiles all the time," says the official, remarking that the war has turned into a modern-day World War I, with largely static front lines. The official says Ukrainian forces have pushed Russian ground forces away from Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city, moving up to the Russian border.