BRUSSELS — The nearly monthlong Russian war in Ukraine is on the verge of entering a stalemate, a senior NATO intelligence official said Monday, with Ukrainian forces preventing Russia from making progress but Russian President Vladimir Putin showing no willingness to back down. 

According to the NATO official who spoke anonymously in order not to reveal sensitive military assessments, “If we don’t reach a stalemate,” he said. “The truth is, neither side holds a superiority or disadvantage over the other.”

Belarus, which is a Russian close ally may be soon attacked Ukraine itself and is preparing to potentially let Russia position nuclear weapons on Belarusian soil, the official said. Belarus already allows Russia to invade Ukraine with its military capabilities.

This dreadful assessment is coming as President Joe Biden, world leaders and others prepare to attend a NATO major summit here in Belgium on Thursday and other high-level meetings focusing on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

NATO Allies and the U.S. have felt encouraged by Ukraine’s remarkable resistance. Russia’s lackluster military performance. Western leaders also warn that Putin isn’t interested in diplomacy to end the conflict, and predict a long-term conflict with disastrous consequences for Ukrainian civilians.

NATO’s official stated that Putin has not made significant progress during the past weeks and is unwilling to accept failure. It seems likely this will prevent him from backing down.

According to the official, the Ukrainians have also “made it clear that they won’t give up,” adding that Russia will likely struggle to control the territory it has captured, given “what’s likely be a persistent, significant Ukrainian insurgency.”

So what does it look like when two military forces are constantly fighting each other? “The loss of life is likely to cause severe damages,” the NATO official stated. There is no way for either side to win. “Neither side can win.”

NATO remains unsure if Putin is going to follow a maximum-success strategy to seize all of Ukraine. But, an official claimed that Russia had expanded its target list in recent days and had hit sites in Western Ukraine which had been largely unaffected since the start of the war.

Russia may be frustrated at its insufficient battlefield successes, but Russian forces are now using more discriminate weapons which cause significant damage and have little capacity to prevent civilian deaths.

The NATO official stated that a deadlock is a prolonged, long-drawn battle. They (the Russians), won’t realize they cannot win. It could be, but it requires some rationality as well as the willingness to concede that you don’t have any evidence.

In Belarus, voters approved last month a referendum to end the country’s non-nuclear status. It was widely seen by many as an attempt to allow Russia to establish nuclear weapons base in the nation, which is bordered to the north by Ukraine. The Russian President Alexander Lukasenko, the Belarusian president, has been Putin’s most loyal ally. He held high-profile talks with Putin and allowed his country to be used for military staging grounds.

The official stated that NATO was concerned about the possibility of Belarusian troops joining the conflict.

The NATO intelligence officer stated that the Belarusian government was preparing for an offensive against Ukraine, and the deployment of Russian nukes in Belarus.

However, the official warned that Russia’s placement of nuclear weapons in Belarus wasn’t a preordained outcome. 

The official said that they were not going to place nukes there today. “They’ve made political moves to allow them to get nuclear weapons now, should such a decision be taken.”

The official stated that while Belarus allowed Russia to use its territory for ground and aerial operations, including strikes and airstrikes and has also permitted Russia to land on Belarus, NATO still hasn’t seen evidence of Belarusian soldiers directly participating in the conflict in Ukraine.

According to the official, all they are now is complicit.