What should be Putin’s next steps in Ukraine?

In a rare interview, Britain’s head of military intelligence told the BBC that he doesn’t believe this year will be a decisive action for either side, but he has his eye on the possibility of Russia using nuclear weapons.

Britain’s head of military intelligence told the BBC that neither Russia nor Ukraine is expected to take decisive military action in Ukraine this year.

Speaking in a rare interview, General Jim Hockenhull said that Russia is also paying attention to the eventual use of nuclear weapons.

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On February 23 of this year, Hockenhull received a call saying there were some strange indications of activity on the Ukrainian border. It has been confirmed that Russia has indeed invaded its neighbor.

Minutes later, he briefed the British Prime Minister and Secretary of Defense about the start of Europe’s biggest armed conflict since the Second World War.

As head of Defense Intelligence for the past four years, Hockenhull has worked in the dark, managing an organization that processes top-secret information. The war in Ukraine made his job more important.

He says he is increasingly convinced that Russia is about to launch its invasion in November of last year. That’s when he thought, “This will happen,” he remembers.

A week before the invasion, he made the rather unusual decision to post a map on Twitter that predicted Russia’s possible invasion plans.

It was a decision he said wasn’t easy, but he was convinced the information needed to be made public. “It’s important to uncover the truth before the lies are revealed,” she says.

He also defends the West’s decision to highlight Russia’s potential to use chemical and biological weapons. He believes this helps prevent them from portraying the Ukrainians or the West as the instigators of the conflict.

Rarely has so much intelligence material been shared with the public. Since then, Defense intelligence has released daily updates on the war.

Intelligence is not a science – predictions are made on a probability scale and there are a few things that surprise UK Defense Intelligence.

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Hockenhull said the strength of the Western contingent and Ukrainian resistance exceeded expectations. He argues that so were the failures of the Russian army, whose command, control and logistics were “weak”. There were also political interventions, from the strategic to the tactical level, he adds.

There is a lack of trust between Russia’s political and military class, and Hockenhull says he is surprised that Moscow has all these problems at once.

What will happen now?

“We have to be careful in binary terms that parties win or lose, or think it’s a stalemate,” Hockenhull says.

Russia is clearly trying to recover after suffering serious losses, he says. He is also forced to redeploy some of his troops south from the Donbass, where he is under severe pressure from the Ukrainian forces.

But Hockenhull says it’s still unrealistic to expect decisive change in the south in the coming months.

He says he understands Ukraine’s desire to take back the land, but adds that while there are counterattacks and counterattacks, he does not believe that both sides will take decisive action this year.

Your expectation is for a long conflict.

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nuclear option

This raises another question: What will Russian President Vladimir Putin do if he continues to encounter setbacks in achieving his military goals? Can it resort to using nuclear weapons?

This has been observed “very, very closely,” Hockenhull says.

Russian military doctrine, unlike that of the West, includes the use of tactical or battlefield nuclear weapons for military operations.

While he believes the imminent deployment of tactical nuclear weapons is unlikely, he says this will continue to follow.

He explains that if the dynamics of the battlefield change, the probability of using them may change.

Concerns about China

After four years as head of Defense Intelligence, Hockenhull will now head the UK’s Strategic Defense Command, which includes overseeing the use of space, cyberspace and special forces.

He still sees Russia as the biggest threat, but is also increasingly concerned about China. Beijing has been showing military strength against Taiwan in recent weeks.

Hockenhull said it would be a mistake not to view “an incredible military modernization with a country determined to solve a political problem” as a problem.

The job of British military intelligence will not be easy.

– This text was originally published at https://www.bbc.com/portuguese/internacional-62528193.

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