CIA Director William Burns. Photo: MANDEL NGAN/AFP
The US is using a weakened Vladimir Putin to recruit spies at home. The head of the CIA said it was Russia.
William Burns, director of the CIA, said that within Russia, shame about the Putin regime and its invasion of Ukraine created a loophole that happens once in a generation.
Mr. Burns made the comment during the annual lecture at the Ditchley Park Foundation in Oxfordshire, a global think tank based in the country house that Winston Churchill used as a refuge during World War II.
In his in a speech, he said that the war in Ukraine was a “strategic failure for Russia” and that Putin had turned Russia into China’s “junior partner and colony.”
“Dissatisfaction with the war will continue to gnaw at the Russian leadership,” he said of emerging opportunities for espionage.
«We won't let this go to waste.»
Europe severed diplomatic and economic ties with Russia after Putin ordered a full-scale invasion last February, forcing the Kremlin to depend on Iran for missiles and drones and China for gas sales.
In March, Chinese leader Xi Jinping flew to Moscow and promised to support Putin in Ukraine. Analysts say the move shows his determination to challenge the US-led world order.
Mr. Burns said that while the immediate danger came from Russia and Putin, the long-term threat to global stability came from China.
“China is the only country that intends to change both the international order and, in increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military and technological capabilities to do so,” he said.
Last week, shortly before the mutiny of the Wagner mercenary group in Russia, Burns traveled to Kiev to meet with top Ukrainian officials to reassure them of support for Joe Biden despite some criticisms of the slow pace of their counteroffensive.
< p>He called the failed Wagner uprising an «internal affair» of Russia, but also said that criticism of the Russian military by Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of the mercenaries, «will continue for some time».
Commentators say the US and British intelligence services have restored their reputation, which had been tarnished by setbacks leading up to the 2003 Iraq war, by correctly predicting Putin's attack.
Still a dangerous man.
Mr. Burns also said that at times the declassification of secrets during the war and their leak to the media embarrassed Putin.
“This deprived Putin of false stories about that I was watching him. so often invents in the past, putting him in an uncomfortable and unusual position of lagging behind,” he said.
But despite his humiliation in Ukraine and the failures of domestic policy in Russia, Mr. Burns said Putin remains a dangerous man who «has great grudges, ambitions and insecurities.»
«The only thing I've learned is that it would be a mistake to underestimate Putin's obsession with controlling and choosing Ukraine,» he said.
Mr. Burns, former US ambassador to Russia and head of the CIA since March 2021, added that the recruitment campaign has been successfully rolled out on social media.
«We recently used social media, our first video post on Telegram, to tell brave Russians how to contact us securely via the Darknet» , — he said. during the lecture.
“We had 2.5 million views in the first week and we are very open for business.”
Telegram is by far the most popular Russian-language messenger and news application.
It is also considered a freer place for the exchange of information between Russians than the country's internet, which is tightly controlled by the Kremlin.
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