WASHINGTON, D.C. - Ukraine’s military is shutting down claims that Russia captured an eastern Ukrainian town. Ukrainian officials said the fighting is still ongoing there. Overall, experts believe the war could continue for a while. 

“I think Ukraine has been making great strides,” said Susan Cho, the director of intelligence with Hyperion Services. Hyperion Services specialize in high-risk security protection and private hostage rescues around the world. They’ve executed missions in Afghanistan, Africa and even in Ukraine during the Russian invasion. 

“In the beginning we were doing a lot of evacuations,” said Cho. “People from various different entities, they could be from corporations, could be families, there’s a lot of industry in Ukraine a lot of western industry that people don’t realize and so there’s a lot of requests for getting people out safely and a lot of people have medical conditions and such but even in an evacuation in a combat situation as something as unusual as Ukraine it’s pretty much combat.” 

February 2023 will mark one year since the invasion. Cho believes the war will continue for a while and speculates there could possibly be a regime change in Russia.   

“It's unclear whether [Vladimir] Putin will remain in power,” said Cho. “Whether that’s by his own personal health issues that people are speculating, maybe he has terminal cancer. Whatever those issues are or if he gets deposed by somebody else who wants to take over.” 

Cho believes the Russian regime could become more brazen with their attacks.  

“I don’t think people realize how volatile it can be at any moment,” said Cho.