Russia Increases Its 'Reliance On Nuclear Weapons' Amid 'Heavy Losses' In Ukraine: ODNI

Russia will likely become more reliant on nuclear weapons to achieve its goals in Ukraine as it continues to suffer mounting losses in the war, a U.S. intelligence report said.

In a report titled "Annual Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community" published Monday, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence suggested that Russia could begin relying on its cyber and space capabilities to deal with its losses to its ranks.

"Moscow's military forces have suffered losses during the Ukraine conflict that will require years of rebuilding and leave them less capable of posing a conventional military threat to European security, and operating assertively in Eurasia and on the global stage," the assessment read.

"Heavy losses to its ground forces and the large-scale expenditures of precision-guided munitions during the conflict have degraded Moscow's ground and air-based conventional capabilities and increased its reliance on nuclear weapons."

The unclassified 35-page intelligence assessment also stressed that Russia's nuclear weapons stockpile is "the largest and most capable," adding that Moscow continues to expand and modernize its nuclear capabilities.

"Russia is expanding and modernizing its large, diverse, and modern set of nonstrategic systems, which are capable of delivering nuclear or conventional warheads because Moscow believes such systems offer options to deter adversaries, control the escalation of potential hostilities, and counter U.S. and allied conventional forces," the report added.

The intelligence assessment comes over two weeks after Russian President Vladimir Putin announced he is suspending Moscow's participation in the New START treaty, a crucial nuclear arms reduction agreement between the U.S. and Russia. The pact put limits on the number of nuclear weapons held by each country and imposed broad inspections of nuclear sites.

The New START treaty was the last remaining nuclear arms control pact Russia had with the U.S after former President Donald Trump in 2019 withdrew from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, which prohibited the development and deployment of ground-launched nuclear missiles with ranges between 310 miles and 3,420 miles.

The assessment also comes as Russia's military death toll hits 155,530, according to estimates from the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine. The figure includes 700 soldiers killed over the past day.