kyiv the head of us intelligence says fighting in russias war in ukraine is running at a reduced tempo and suggests ukrainian forces could have brighter prospects in coming monthsavril haines alluded to past allegations by some that russian president vladimir putins advisers could be shielding him from bad news for russia about war developments and said he is becoming more informed of the challenges that the military faces in russiabut its still not clear to us that he has a full picture of at this stage of just how challenged they are the us director of national intelligence said late saturday at the reagan national defense forum in simi valley californialooking ahead haines said honestly were seeing a kind of a reduced tempo already of the conflict and her team expects that both sides will look to refit resupply and reconstitute for a possible ukrainian counteroffensive in the springbut we actually have a fair amount of skepticism as to whether or not the russians will be in fact prepared to do that she said and i think more optimistically for the ukrainians in that timeframeon sunday the british ministry of defense in its latest intelligence estimate pointed to new signs from an independent russian media outlet that public support in russia for the military campaign was falling significantlymeduza said it obtained a recent confidential opinion survey conducted by the federal protection service which is in charge of guarding the kremlin and providing security to top government officialsthe survey commissioned by the kremlin found that 55 of respondents backed peace talks with ukraine while 25 wanted the war to go on the report didnt mention the margin of errorlevada center russias top independent pollster found in a similar poll carried out in november poll that 53 of respondents supported peace talks 41 spoke in favor of continuing the fight and 6 were undecided that poll of 1600 people had a margin of error of no more than 34 percentthe british defense ministry noted that despite the russian authorities efforts to enforce pervasive control of the information environment the conflict has become increasingly tangible for many russians since the september 2022 partial mobilizationwith russia unlikely to achieve major battlefield successes in the next several months maintaining even tacit approval of the war amongst the population is likely to be increasingly difficult for the kremlin it saidin recent weeks russias military focus has been on striking ukrainian infrastructure and pressing an offensive in the east near the town of bakhmut while shelling sites in the city of kherson which ukrainian forces liberated last month after an 8month russian occupationin his nightly address on saturday ukrainian president volodymyr zelenskyy lashed out at western efforts to crimp russias crucial oil industry a key source of funds for putins war machine saying their 60perbarrel price cap on imports of russian oil was insufficientit is not a serious decision to set such a limit for russian prices which is quite comfortable for the budget