CIA chief on Wagner-Russia dispute: ‘A vivid reminder of the corrosive effect of Putin’s war’

CIA Director William Burns said the internal conflict in Russia which saw a mercenary leader turn on Moscow shows the damage Russian President Vladimir Putin has done to his country.

Wagner Group chief Yevgeny Prigozhin spoke out against Russian military leadership for weeks before deciding to lead his forces against it. That open contempt surprised Burns, he said, and will have a lasting impact on the Russian government.

“It is striking that he preceded his actions with a scathing indictment of the Kremlin’s mendacious rationale for the invasion of Ukraine and of the Russian military leadership’s conduct of the war,” Burns said at the Ditchley Foundation in Oxfordshire, England on Saturday.

“The impact of those words and those actions will play out for some time — a vivid reminder of the corrosive effect of Putin’s war on his own society and his own regime,” he added.

Burns, who previously served as a U.S. ambassador to Russia, made a secret visit to Ukraine to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in late June, according to reports from The Washington Post. His visit came just before Prigozhin’s revolt.

Burns made a similar secret visit to China in early June.

In his talk Saturday, Burns also said the ongoing war in Ukraine and the domestic strife that it has caused has resulted in an increase in CIA recruitment out of Russia.

“Disaffection with the war will continue to gnaw away at the Russian leadership beneath the steady diet of state propaganda and practiced repression,” he said. “That disaffection creates a once-in-a-generation opportunity for us at the CIA, at our core a human intelligence service.

“We’re not letting it go to waste,” Burns added.