CIA Director William J. Burns on Monday met with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s top intelligence official in Turkey to convey a stern message about the consequences that would occur if Moscow uses nuclear weapons in Ukraine.
The meeting came at a moment of ongoing Russian military setbacks in Ukraine. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy triumphantly toured the newly liberated city of Kherson on Monday, hailing Russia’s withdrawal from the city as the “beginning of the end of the war.”
Mr. Zelenskyy acknowledged the heavy price Ukrainian troops are paying in their grinding effort to push back the invaders, although the retaking of Kherson dealt a stinging blow to the Kremlin — a development that could open the way to more Ukrainian advances into Russian-occupied territory.
President Biden called the retaking of Kherson a “significant victory” for Ukraine.
“I can do nothing but applaud the courage, determination and capacity of the Ukrainian people, the Ukrainian military,” Mr. Biden said on the sidelines of a Group of 20 summit in Indonesia.
Until Kyiv is ready to talk, U.S. officials say, the administration is not pushing for a negotiation with Russia over Russian-occupied areas of eastern Ukraine.
A White House official said the Burns meeting in Turkey centered not on negotiations but on making sure the Kremlin understood the consequences of a nuclear attack, according to Reuters. The meeting follows reports of similar secretive talks recently between White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and top Putin aides.
Mr. Burns’ meeting with Sergei Naryshkin, the head of Russia’s SVR foreign intelligence service, was the highest-ranking face-to-face engagement between U.S. and Russian officials since before the war.
The meeting was first reported by Russia’s Kommersant newspaper, which quoted a White House official as saying Mr. Burns would not be “conducting negotiations of any kind” and that the CIA director also “is not discussing settlement of the war in Ukraine,” although he would be raising the case of detained Americans in Russia.
The Kremlin has faced a number of setbacks on the battlefield since invading Ukraine on Feb. 24.
Ukraine’s military has retaken dozens of towns and villages north of the city of Kherson, which is a key gateway to the Crimean Peninsula to the south — a region Russia illegally annexed in 2014.
While large parts of eastern and southern Ukraine are still under Russian control, the end of Russia’s occupation of Kherson — the only provincial capital its forces have seized since the February invasion — has sparked days of celebration.
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However, residents remain without heat, water and electricity and short on food and medicine. Mr. Zelenskyy, who awarded medals to Ukrainian soldiers in Kherson on Monday, said the city is laced with traps and mines, and Ukrainian authorities say there are signs of atrocities emerging.
And some are cautioning against overconfidence in Ukraine with Russia still fielding a powerful force inside the country occupying strong defensive positions in parts of the south and east.
On a visit to the Hague, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg warned the West “should not make the mistake of underestimating Russia.”
“The Russian armed forces retain significant capability as well as a large number of troops, and Russia has demonstrated their willingness to bear significant losses,” he said.
A senior Pentagon officials said Monday that Russian troops appear to be digging in along the eastern side of Ukraine’s Dnieper River.
“The Russians did significant damage to civilian infrastructure, to include water and utility systems,” the senior military official told reporters in a background briefing. “The Russians don’t appear inclined to depart the rest of occupied Ukraine, so there’s undoubtedly still tough fighting ahead.”
Some Kremlin hawks have hinted Russia could resort to nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction to protect the homeland as Russian troops have come up against Ukrainian forces armed with often overwhelming firepower supplied by the U.S. and other NATO countries.
Poland’s Ambassador to the United States Marek Magierowski told The Washington Times in a recent interview that the odds of Moscow using nuclear weapons in Ukraine are low because Mr. Putin knows it “would be politically and militarily suicidal.”
Although Poland is concerned about nuclear threats from the Kremlin, Mr. Magierowski said, Mr. Putin has never explicitly said that Moscow is considering deploying nuclear bombs.
“The odds are pretty low of Mr. Putin or Russia using the nuclear card,” the ambassador said.
Under pressure from all sides to take the nuclear option off the table, Mr. Putin appears to have relented in recent days.
Speaking at a gathering of foreign policy analysts late last month, Mr. Putin said there was no reason for Russia, which with the U.S. has one of the largest nuclear arsenals in the world, to strike Ukraine with nuclear weapons.
“We see no need for that,” Mr. Putin said. “There is no point in that, neither political, nor military.”
• Mike Glenn contributed to this story, which was based in part on wire service reports.
• Guy Taylor can be reached at gtaylor@washingtontimes.com.
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