William J Burns says dissatisfaction with the conflict in Russia is a valuable recruiting tool.
William J Burns said the failure of the Ukraine war risked undermining Vladimir Putin's leadership of RussiaThe Ukraine war is having a "corrosive" effect on Vladimir Putin's leadership of Russia, according to the head of the Central Intelligence Agency .
Prigozhin's actions were "a vivid reminder of the corrosive effect of Putin's war on his own society and his own regime", he said. "That disaffection creates a once in a generation opportunity for us at CIA," referring to the role of the agency in recruiting human agents to provide intelligence. He did not directly address recent reports in the Washington Post that he made a secret visit to the Ukrainian capital before the mutiny.
But he added that one thing that he had learnt was that it was always a mistake to underestimate Mr Putin's fixation on controlling Ukraine. "Putin's war has already been a strategic failure for Russia: its military weaknesses laid bare, its economy badly damaged for years to come, its future as a junior partner and economic colony of China being shaped by Putin's mistakes."
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