- By Gordon Corera
- Security Correspondent, BBC News
1 hour ago
Image source: Getty Images
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William J. Burns said the failure of the Ukraine war risks undermining Vladimir Putin’s leadership in Russia
The Ukraine war is having a “destructive” effect on Vladimir Putin’s leadership in Russia, according to the head of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
Russia’s dissatisfaction with the war is providing the CIA with new intelligence-gathering opportunities, said the agency’s director, William J. Burns.
America’s top spy spoke during his annual presentation at the Ditchley Foundation in the UK.
He spoke a week after the mutiny by Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin.
Mr Burns said everyone was “captivated” by the scenes last Saturday, when Prigozhin “armedly” challenged Moscow as his Wagnerian mercenary troops marched towards the Russian capital.
Prigozhin’s actions are “a vivid reminder of the corrosive effect of Putin’s war on his own society and regime,” he said.
The CIA director said the repercussions not only of Prigozhin’s actions but also of his statements – which included an indictment of both the motivations and the conduct of the Russian invasion – would linger for some time.
“Dissatisfaction with the war will continue to gnaw at the Russian leadership,” Mr Burns said in his prepared remarks.
“This dissatisfaction creates a unique opportunity for us at the CIA,” referring to the agency’s role in recruiting human agents to provide intelligence.
“We’re not going to let it go to waste,” he said to laughter from the audience. “We are very open to business.”
The CIA recently launched a new social media campaign to reach out to people in Russia, including a video posted to the social media site Telegram, which is widely shared by Russians. The campaign provided instructions on how to contact the CIA on the dark web without being monitored.
This video was viewed 2.5 million times in the first week.
Director Burns also reiterated the message, previously made public by other US officials, that the US was not involved in Prigozhin’s mutiny.
He did not directly address recent Washington Post reports that he had paid a secret visit to the Ukrainian capital before the mutiny.
It was reported that the talks also discussed the possibility that progress in Ukraine’s counteroffensive could pave the way for negotiations from a stronger position if significant territory were seized.
Mr Burns – who previously served as US ambassador to Russia from 2005 to 2008 – said he has spent much of the past two decades understanding Russian President Putin, instilling in him a “healthy dose of humility when talking about Putin and… Russia” awarded.
But he added that he had learned that underestimating Mr Putin’s fixation on controlling Ukraine is always a mistake.
The Russian leader believed that Russia could not be a great power without Ukraine and that Mr Putin himself could not be a great leader, he said.
“This tragic and brutal fixation has already shamed Russia and exposed its weaknesses,” Burns said.
“Putin’s war was already a strategic failure for Russia: its military weaknesses were exposed, its economy was badly damaged for years to come, its future as China’s junior partner and economic colony was shaped by Putin’s mistakes.”
Referring to China, the CIA chief said that because of the deep economic interdependence between the two countries, it would be foolish for the US to try to decouple.
“China is the only country that both intends to transform the international order and increasingly has the economic, diplomatic, military and technological might to do so,” he said.
Instead, the US should “de-risk and diversify meaningfully by securing resilient supply chains, protecting our technological edge and investing in industrial capacity,” he added.