WASHINGTON – Just 14 months into Russia’s war on Ukraine, Moscow’s military has become so degraded that it could take up to 10 years for its forces to recover, US intelligence officials told a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing Thursday.

“The reorganization that the Russian military took in the early 2000s … to be better, faster, smaller from what they were in the Soviet era – that army largely is gone,” said Defense Intelligence Agency director Lt. Gen. Scott D. Berrier.

“And they’re relying on reserve [troops] and reserve equipment, older, Soviet-era kinds of [equipment.]”

The bleak outlook comes after the White House on Monday estimated that roughly 100,000 Russian forces have been killed or wounded since December alone, bringing the approximate Kremlin casualty total to about 200,000 since the war began Feb. 24, 2022.

That is roughly the same number of troops Russian President Vladimir Putin sent into Ukraine at the war’s outset – a force he assumed at the time would be enough to take Kyiv and overthrow its democratically elected government.

“The Russians are unlikely to be able to mount a significant offensive operation this year,” Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines told the committee.

“In fact, if Russia does not initiate a mandatory mobilization [of troops] and secure substantial [future] third-party ammunition supplies … from Iran and others, it will be increasingly challenging for them to sustain even modest offensive operations.”

But it’s not just boots on the ground that Russia needs, officials said; Moscow is believed to have depleted much of its conventional weapons and military technology

“It’s gonna take them a while to build back to more advanced [equipment and troops,]” Berrier said.

“The estimates go from five to 10 years based on how sanctions affect them and their ability to put technology back into their force.”

With its troops and weaponry depleted, Russia has focused its efforts for several months on the eastern Ukrainian town of Bahkmut, which US officials have said lacks strategic value for Moscow.

The fighting … remains a brutally grinding war of attrition in which neither military has a definitive advantage, with day-to-day fighting over hundreds of meters,” Haines said.

“Russian forces gained less territory in April than during any of the three previous months.”

With Moscow’s progress stalled, the top US intelligence official said, Russian forces appear to be “transition[ing] from offensive to defensive operations along the front lines.”

“Both sides are focusing on preparations for [a] potential Ukrainian counter offensive this spring or summer, designed to push Russia out of illegally annexed territory,” Haines said.

“The Ukrainian Armed Forces are still finalizing the specific priorities, timing and scale of the offensive.”

With Russian forces no closer to securing Putin’s ambition to conquer all of Ukraine, Haines said Moscow may aim to change its stated intentions to stop the fight – at least for a little while.

“We assess that Putin probably has scaled back his immediate ambitions to consolidate control of the occupied territory in eastern and southern Ukraine, and ensuring that Ukraine will never become a NATO ally,” she said.

Those terms are unlikely to tempt Kyiv, as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy wants to return more of Ukraine’s territory to his country – including Crimea, annexed by Moscow in 2014.

And while the White House has repeatedly refused to comment on whether the Biden administration would support Ukraine’s accession into NATO, the alliance adheres to a strict “open-door policy” and would not agree to ban any nation from applying for membership.

Still, the attrition of Russian forces could drive Putin to the negotiating table, Haines said.

“Putin’s willingness to consider a negotiated pause may be based on his assessment that a pause would provide a respite for Russian forces as they could try to use that time to regain strength before resuming offensive operations at some point in the future, while buying time for what he hopes will be an erosion of Western support for Ukraine,” she said.

But while Putin’s ground forces and conventional weapons struggle, Moscow’s other services – including its nuclear arsenal – remain formidably intact.

“Moscow has suffered military losses that will require years of rebuilding and leave it less capable of posing a conventional military threat to Europe and operating assertively in Eurasia and on the global stage,” Haines said.

“But as a result, Russia will become even more reliant on asymmetric options, such as nuclear, cyber [and] space capabilities, and on China.”