This is the edited transcript of a discussion between William Burns, director of the CIA, and Edward Luce, national editor of the Financial Times in the United States, which took place on May 7 in Washington.
Financial Times: You traveled to Moscow last November [US] a request from the president to talk to Putin. What was that conversation you had with Putin almost six months ago? . . which convinced you that this invasion would indeed take place?
William Burns: I have had a job and watched President Putin for many years, and what I have seen, especially in the last decade, is that he is somehow suffocating in a very flammable combination of complaint, ambition and insecurity. [that] they are all wrapped together.
His appetite for risk has grown over the years as his grip on power has tightened, as well as his circle of advisers has narrowed.
I came out of these conversations in early November quite worried. It did not seem to me that President Putin had yet made an irreversible decision to launch this invasion or start a war. But he was clearly leaning defiantly in that direction. Strategically, his gaze seemed to close his window to shape Ukraine’s orientation, because in his view, Russia could not be a great power without a respectful Ukraine.
He was convinced that by investing heavily in modernizing his army, the Russian military could achieve a quick, decisive victory at minimal cost. He seemed convinced that our closest European allies were distracted by the political transitions in Germany and the forthcoming elections in France and were not risk-averse. He also seemed convinced that he had created an economy protected from sanctions. He had put away a military chest with hard currency reserves.
As we have seen, as we saw in the first few weeks of this war, he was wrong on every one of these points. These assumptions were deeply flawed. But this creates in the second phase of his offensive, as he has concentrated forces in the Donbass in eastern Ukraine and the south, at least as risky as this first phase we saw in the first seven or eight weeks of conflict, and maybe would be even riskier in some ways.
FT: Do you have reason to believe that Putin is now hearing what he needs to hear?
WB: I think he’s in a mood he doesn’t believe he can afford to lose. . . I don’t think that means Putin is holding back at the moment, because he’s betting so much on the choice he made to start this invasion that I think he’s convinced right now that doubling will still allow him to make progress.
FT: I have to ask you about this relatively new coin, “preventive intelligence.” . . You took a big risk by saying that [invasion] it will happen. What made you so confident besides meeting you [Putin] in November?
WB: It was the detail and precision of what we saw about Russian planning, combined with what I was trying to say before, that was Vladimir Putin’s absolute conviction that the window was closing for him to use force. . . That doesn’t mean we haven’t had many sleepless nights wondering if we’re right or not, and many sleepless nights we actually hope we’ve made a mistake.
When [US] the president has taken some very careful and selective decisions to declassify intelligence, I think he has helped to deny Putin something I have observed for many years how he does quite skillfully, namely to create false accounts of so-called operations under fake flag. He was determined on the eve of the war to try to create a pretext for this invasion, to try to create cases in which he could try to shift the blame on the Ukrainians for provoking hostilities – and by exposing many of these false stories, I think we have helped in many ways to disarm what was once a useful weapon for him.
FT: News reports claim that the United States has provided data to Ukrainians, allowing them to target Russian generals, 12 of whom are already dead, and Moscow [war ship]. Can I ask you to comment on these stories?
WB: That’s irresponsible. It is very risky, it is dangerous when people talk too much, whether they are leaking in private or talking publicly about specific intelligence issues. Both the White House and the Department of Defense have spoken about it publicly, so I have nothing to add to that.
The only thing I would say is a big mistake to underestimate the significant intelligence capabilities that Ukrainians themselves have. This is their country. They have much more information than we do and much more intelligence than we do in the United States and among our allies.
FT: One of the things everyone thinks about is the escalating risk of this situation. We have not seen a nuclear leader talk so often, perhaps at any time, at least after the Cuban Missile Crisis, about nuclear escalation. What could be the potential triggers for this extreme scenario for tactical combat weapons or a test over the Black Sea?
WB: We do not see, as an intelligence community, practical evidence at this time of Russian planning, deployment or even potential use of tactical nuclear weapons. But, you know, given the kind of rattlesnake we’ve heard from the Russian leadership, we can’t take it lightly. . . these possibilities.
I think [what’s] It is incredibly important for both Russians and Americans to remember that we are still, at least today, the only nuclear superpower in the world. Together, we control 90 percent of the world’s nuclear weapons, and even in the worst stages of the Cold War, both the Russian and American leaders have shown an awareness that we have unique capabilities but also unique responsibilities. That is why it is absolutely important for the Russian leadership, despite all this rattling of a nuclear sword, to remember this responsibility not only to the Russians and the Americans, but also to the entire global community.
FT: We heard long before the war, not so much now for obvious reasons, about the “Finnishization” of Ukraine. Now, I mean, maybe next week we’ll get the “natolization” of Finland and probably Sweden, which Putin mentioned as one of his red lines. . . Does that bother you?
WB: These are choices that Finns and Swedes will make. In many ways, these are elections that Putin himself has made out of the ugliness of his aggression against Ukraine and the threats he has made against the West as a whole.
FT: What lessons do you think China is learning from the situation in Ukraine for Taiwan, and what revaluations, if any, do you think they are giving Putin?
WB: I wouldn’t underestimate [President] Xi Jinping’s commitment to Putin’s partnership with Russia. On February 4, at the opening of the Beijing Winter Olympics, three weeks earlier [Putin] began its invasion of Ukraine, China and Russia issued a very long joint statement declaring friendship without restrictions.
I think Putin’s bitter experience in many respects of Russia in Ukraine over the last 10 or 11 weeks has shown that this friendship actually has some limits.
However, we are impressed that Xi Jinping is a little worried about the reputational damage that could be done to China due to the brutality of, you know, Russian aggression against the Ukrainians: worried, of course, about the economic uncertainty caused by the war, especially one year, 2022, when I think Xi’s main focus is on predictability and the passage of a major party congress next November, and I also think I’m concerned that what Putin has done is to bring people closer together. Europeans and Americans.
Apparently, the Chinese leadership is trying to look carefully at the lessons it needs to learn from Ukraine about its own ambitions in Taiwan. I don’t think for a minute that this has undermined Xi’s determination to gain control of Taiwan over time. But I think that’s something that affects their calculations of how and when they do it.
I suspect they were surprised by [the] Russian military performance. I suspect that they have been struck by the ways in which Ukrainians have resisted through the efforts of ‘the whole of society’. I think they were struck by the way in which the Transatlantic Alliance in particular has come together to impose economic costs on Russia as a result of this aggression. So I think these are things that they weigh very carefully at the moment.
Transcribed by James Polity in Washington
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