The Washington Post on June 30 quoted US officials as saying that CIA Director William Burns secretly visited Kyiv in June. Mr. Burns met with President Volodymyr Zelensky and top Ukrainian intelligence officials.
CIA Director William Burns
During the meetings, Mr. Burns heard Ukrainian officials present an ambitious strategy to regain territory and open ceasefire negotiations before the end of the year.
“Military planners in Kyiv have conveyed to Mr. Burns and others their growing confidence in their goal of retaking much of the country by fall, moving artillery and missile systems closer to the Russian-controlled line in Crimea, pushing deeper into eastern Ukraine and then opening talks with Moscow for the first time since peace talks collapsed last March,” The Washington Post wrote.
Quick view: Day 491 of the campaign, Ukraine counterattacks 'slowly but surely', soldiers fear Russian suicide UAVs
A senior Ukrainian official noted that Russia would only negotiate if it felt threatened. On the other hand, the CIA director’s visit to Kyiv was intended to reaffirm the US administration’s commitment to sharing intelligence tools to help Ukraine defend itself.
The trip came just before the uprising of the Wagner mercenary group in Russia, officials said. Although the U.S. intelligence community learned in mid-June that Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin was plotting attacks, the information was not discussed in meetings between Burns and Ukrainian officials.
U.S. and Ukrainian officials have stressed that they had nothing to do with the Wagner rebellion. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that the CIA director also called Russian Foreign Intelligence Service Director Sergei Naryshkin after the rebellion to emphasize that the U.S. had nothing to do with it.
Ukraine calls on NATO to give green light at July summit
Source link
Comment (0)