Sign up now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com Register WASHINGTON, April 14 (Reuters) – Russia’s threat to possibly use regular or low-yield nuclear weapons in Ukraine could not be taken seriously, but the CIA has not seen much practical evidence to reinforce that concern, he said on Thursday. CIA Director William Burns. . Burns’s most widespread public comments since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24 underscored concerns that the largest attack on a European state since 1945 could escalate into the use of nuclear weapons. Earlier on Thursday, Dmitry Medvedev, Russia’s vice-president of the Security Council and a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, warned NATO that Moscow would develop nuclear weapons and supersonic missiles in the Kaliningrad region. and Finland joined the Atlantic Alliance. read more Sign up now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com Register Burns spoke to Georgia Tech about the “potential despair” and setbacks of Putin, whose forces suffered heavy casualties and were forced to retreat from parts of northern Ukraine after failing to occupy Kyiv. For these reasons, “none of us can take lightly the threat posed by a potential recourse to regular nuclear weapons or low-efficiency nuclear weapons,” Burns said. That said, despite the Kremlin’s “rhetorical stance” on putting the world’s largest nuclear arsenal on alert, “We have not seen much practical evidence of the kind of developments or military dispositions that would reinforce this concern.” Low-performance tactical and nuclear weapons refer to those designed for use on the battlefield, of which some experts estimate that Russia has about 2,000 that can be delivered by air, naval, and ground forces. Burns’ comments came in response to a question from former Sen. Sam Nun, a top gun control advocate, at the end of the CIA chief’s first public address since taking office in March 2021. In a wide-ranging speech, the former US career diplomat said US spy services began gathering “worrying and detailed” information last fall about Putin’s plan for a “major new invasion” of Ukraine. Burns said President Joe Biden sent him to Moscow in November “to convey directly to Putin and several of his closest advisers the depth of our concern about his planning for war and the consequences for Russia” if they continued. “I was troubled by what I heard,” he said, adding that while Putin may not have made the final decision, he seemed convinced that his forces “would achieve a quick decisive victory at minimal cost.” Putin believed that Washington’s European allies were distracted from their domestic politics and that it had a “foreign exchange” war chest of foreign exchange reserves, Burns said. “Putin turned out to be wrong in each of these allegations,” he said. The Russian leader was “squeezed” into grievances, ambitions and insecurities and apparently saw the “window close to shaping Ukraine’s orientation” away from the West, said Burns, who called Putin a “reciprocal apostle.” U.S. intelligence services were vital to Ukraine’s fight against Russian forces, said Burns, whose diplomatic posts included a U.S. ambassador to Moscow. The “crimes” said by these forces committed in the Ukrainian city of Bukha are “horrible”. Russia, which has repeatedly denied targeting civilians, has accused its forces of plotting to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad while seizing control of the city. The Kremlin says it has launched a “special military operation” to demilitarize and “liberate” Ukraine from nationalist extremists. In other remarks, Burns called China a formidable competitor seeking to overtake the United States in every field, from economic and military power to space and cyberspace. China’s ambitions under leader Xi Jinping are “quite threatening” and include the possibility of Beijing seeking military control of Taiwan, he said. “The further we go out this decade, the greater this risk becomes,” he said. Sign up now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com Register Report by Jonathan Landay and Michael Martina. Editing by Howard Goller Our role models: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
