CIA chief warns Russian counterpart against N-use

William Burns, the director of the CentralIntelligence Agency, met with his Russian counterpart in Turkiye on Monday to warn Russia against the use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine, a White House spokesman said.

The National Security Council said Burns’ meeting in Ankara was not in any way to negotiate or to discuss any settlement of the war in Ukraine. Ukraine was briefed in advance on the trip, the spokesman said.

President Biden has insisted that Ukraine, and not the US, will dictate if and when negotiations commence to end the war. But a disagreement has emerged at the highest levels of the US government over whether to press Ukraine to seek a diplomatic end to the war with Russia, with America’s top general urging in closed-door meetings that Ukraine should negotiate to cement its recent gains. Burns was also set to raise the case of Americans detained in Russia, the National Security Council said.

Kommersant, a Russian newspaper, reported on Monday that the Russian delegation in Ankara was headed by Sergei Naryshkin, the head of the country’s foreign intelligence service. Kremlin spokesman, Dmitri Peskov, would not confirm or deny whether a meeting took place. A CIA spokeswoman declined to comment. The agency never comments on the director’s travel.