‘Time is not in Russia’s favor’: Battlefield losses and economic pain pile pressure on Putin, European spy chief says | CNN

Russian President Vladimir Putin is running out of time to win his war against Ukraine, amid a stalemate on the battlefield and growing troubles at home, a European intelligence chief has told CNN. In the next four or five months, Putin “may not be able to negotiate from a position of strength anymore,” Kaupo Rosin, head of Estonia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, said in an interview at the intelligence agency’s headquarters in Tallinn. Rosin detailed a combination of economic, military and societal pressures facing Putin that could force him to the negotiating table. “Time is not in Russia’s favor,” he said. A former Soviet republic, Estonia is now a listening post for NATO, and Rosin spends much of his working life analyzing events inside the country’s overbearing and hostile neighbor. “I do not hear any more talk about total victory. People (in the Kremlin) recognize that the situation on the Ukrainian battlefield is not going too well,” Rosin said, adding that Moscow was losing more men than it can recruit. In the two years to January, Russian forces advanced at an average of 70 meters (230 feet) a day, with about 1,000 soldiers being killed or wounded dai