Ukraine's military intelligence chief says Russia has resources to wage war through 2027–2028

Why it matters

The interview offers a rare direct assessment from the head of Ukraine's military intelligence, the Main Intelligence Directorate (HUR) of the Ministry of Defence, of Russia's capacity to sustain its war effort over the next two years. It documents Russia's reliance on foreign mercenaries recruited in part through deception, which raises accountability and policy questions for the mercenaries' countries of origin. By tying economic strain, recruitment bottlenecks, and public opposition to the need for sanctions that actually work, the assessment frames those pressure points as leverage where international cooperation could change the trajectory of the war.

What happened

In an interview with Ukrinform, Oleh Ivashchenko, head of Ukraine's Main Intelligence Directorate (HUR), laid out HUR's assessment of Russia's war-making capacity. He said Russia is using foreign mercenaries from more than 40 countries, including Central Asia, Africa, and Latin America, deploying them mostly in assault units and often ahead of Russian troops. Some of those fighters are recruited through deception: they travel to Russia seeking work and sign contracts without understanding what they are signing. Foreigners, according to Ivashchenko, only partially compensate Russia's losses and do not solve its manpower problem.

On the economy, Ivashchenko said Russia is significantly weaker than at the start of the full-scale invasion, with main problems being labour shortages, a growing federal budget deficit, and a deteriorating banking sector. He nevertheless said HUR does not rule out that Russia has enough resources to continue the war in 2027 and 2028. Russia's contract recruitment model, he added, has largely exhausted itself, and regional budgets can no longer sustain contract payments. Average daily Russian losses — killed and severely wounded — stand at 1,200 to 1,400, sometimes reaching 1,500.

Ivashchenko said more than 60% of Russia's population is against the war and that discontent is expected to grow, though whether it will produce a strong protest movement is unclear. To reduce Russia's resources, he called for joint work with international partners and sanctions that actually work, noting that Ukraine has identified which countries supply Russia with electronic components, machinery, and special chemicals, often through intermediary (shell) companies.

How Ukrainian sources describe it

All coverage of the interview is from Ukrainian outlets and is built around the official assessment of HUR head Oleh Ivashchenko. Ukrainian framing consistently stresses Russia's economic strain, the exhaustion of its contract recruitment model, and the more than 60% domestic opposition as pressure points where working sanctions and international cooperation could bite. The use of foreign mercenaries — particularly the deception-based recruitment documented by Ukraine's Ministry of Foreign Affairs — is presented as both a Russian vulnerability and a policy problem for the mercenaries' countries of origin.

Background

The interview is the single source for these statements, attributable to HUR head Oleh Ivashchenko. An earlier Ukrainian presidential statement, referenced in reporting, had urged Russia not to continue the war in 2027–2028 — the horizon against which this intelligence assessment is implicitly framed. Ukraine's Ministry of Foreign Affairs had reported on 16 August that Russia had recruited at least 2,982 people from 37 African countries into its armed forces, of whom 486 had been killed, supplementing the broader picture of foreign-mercenary use.