CIA director: Putin isn’t sentimental over lives lost
Russian President Vladimir Putin is not a “sentimentalist” when it comes to the massive loss of life his troops are facing in Ukraine and believes he can exhaust Ukraine and the West and ultimately win the war, CIA Director Bill Burns said Sunday.
Burns, speaking on CBS “Face the Nation,” said the U.S. must provide full material and intelligence support in coming months to “puncture that hubris on Putin’s part” and regain momentum.
He said Putin is convinced he “can’t afford to lose” so he will try to drag out the war.
“Putin’s view of Americans, of us, has been that we have attention deficit disorder, and we’ll move on to some other issue eventually,” he said. “So instead of looking for ways to either back down or find a famous off ramp, you know, what Putin has done is double down,” Burns said. Developing:
⬤ Russian forces have attacked almost two dozen communities near Bakhmut, a Donetsk region city and the focus of much of the fighting in recent weeks. “The adversary keeps attacking the positions of Ukrainian troops,” the Ukraine military said on Facebook. “Enemy offensives were unsuccessful.”
⬤ The Russia Ministry of Defense claimed Sunday to have destroyed 390 Ukrainian airplanes, 211 helicopters, 3,243 drones, 405 air missile systems, 8,042 tanks and other armored fighting vehicles and 1,045 fighting vehicles equipped with multiple launch rocket systems since the war began a year ago. The ministry also claimed 4,222 field artillery guns and mortars, as well as 8,556 units of special military vehicles, have been destroyed since the invasion began.