A NATO official in Brussels told NBC News Russia’s nearly month-long war with Ukraine is rapidly reaching a stalemate. Ukrainian forces are stopping Russian advances but Vladimir Putin shows no sign of halting his attacks on civilians.
“If we’re not in a stalemate, we are rapidly approaching one. The reality is that neither side has a superiority over the other.”
NATO Official to NBC News
NATO officials tell NBC that Putin shows no sign of admitting defeat or failure, nor does he seem willing to seriously discuss a cease fire. Meanwhile, while western military officials have been surprised by Ukraine’s military prowess, Russia still has the ammunition to deliver deadly attacks to civilian areas of Ukraine for months to come.
“So what happens when you have these two forces then grinding on each other in this way? The loss of life and the damage is going to be quite severe,” the NATO official said. “Neither side here can win. Neither side will capitulate.”
It remains unclear to NATO whether Putin intends to pursue a “maximalist” strategy to capture all or most of Ukraine, the official said, but asserted that Russia had clearly expanded its set of targets in recent days, including by hitting sites in western Ukraine that had gone mostly untouched in the early days of the war.