CIA chief: Putin too confident he can exhaust Ukraine’s will
WILMINGTON, Del. — As the war in Ukraine enters its second year, CIA Director William Burns said Sunday that Russian President Vladimir Putin is being “too confident” in his military’s ability to grind Ukraine into submission.
Burns, in a television interview, said the head of Russia’s intelligence services had displayed in their November meeting “a sense of cockiness and hubris” that reflected Putin’s own beliefs “that he can make time work for him, that he believes he can grind down the Ukrainians, that he can wear down our European allies, that political fatigue will eventually set in.”
That conversation, in which Burns warned of the consequences if Russia were to deploy a nuclear weapon in Ukraine, was “pretty dispiriting,” Burns said.
Burns said he judged Putin as “quite determined” to continue prosecuting the war, despite the casualties, tactical shortcomings, and economic and reputational damage to Russia.
“I think Putin is, right now, entirely too confident of his ability ... to wear down Ukraine,” Burns told CBS’ “Face the Nation” in an interview that aired Sunday. Burns said that “at some point, he’s going to have to face up to increasing costs as well, in coffins coming home to some of the poorest parts of Russia,” where he said many of the conscripts “being thrown as cannon fodder” are from.
Burns also said Putin was underestimating U.S. resolve to support Ukraine, saying that it has been his experience that the Russian leader’s view is that Americans have “attention deficit disorder, and we’ll move on to some other issue eventually.”
The comments came at a critical juncture for the war as the Biden administration is “confident that the Chinese leadership is considering” whether to provide “lethal” military equipment to Russia.
“It would be a very risky and unwise bet,” Burns said, adding that such a move could only further strain relations between the world’s two largest economics. “That’s why I hope very much that they don’t.”
The question of military aid and the pace of the war is also a source of uncertainty in the U.S. as GOP lawmakers criticized the administration for not sending F-16 fighter jets.
White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said the U.S. was providing Ukraine with the military aid needed to retake territory seized by Russia. The domestic politics of support for Ukraine are also complicated by some GOP members of Congress who say the administration should pull back and focus more on the needs at home.
Rep. Michael McCaul, chairman of the House Foreign Relations Committee, said planes and longrange artillery could help end the war faster.
“This whole thing is taking too long,” McCaul said. “And it really didn’t have to happen this way,” said McCaul, R-Texas.