The administration considers the invasion of Ukraine to be Putin’s “huge failure.”
David Marlowe, the deputy director of operations of the US Central Intelligence Agency, said that the service is ready to cooperate with Russians who are dissatisfied with the war against Ukraine.
The statement was made during his first public speech since taking office in 2021. The agency is looking for military officials, oligarchs, managers for recruitment, The Wall Street Journal writes. According to him, the invasion of Ukraine was a huge failure for the President of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin.
It also opens up opportunities for Western intelligence services among disaffected Russians, Marlowe said during a speech at George Mason University.
“Putin was at his best the day before the invasion, when he still had the opportunity to coerce Ukraine, influence NATO and demonstrate that Russia is a strong state. He wasted everything,” Marlowe said, noting that now the CIA is open to cooperation”.
“We are looking all over the world for Russians who hate it as much as we do,” he added.
CIA Deputy Director of Analysis Linda Weisgold, who was also present at the event, believes that the war in Ukraine is far from over.
In her opinion, despite repeated failures, Putin has not given up on his initial goals. A key factor in the standoff is each side’s understanding of what they are fighting for, she added.
“Ukrainian soldiers know this. Russian soldiers not so much,” Weisgold stressed.
The CIA and the war in Ukraine
In October, the media reported that the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Bill Burns, arrived in Ukraine and met with the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyi.
According to CNN, he promised that the US would continue to share intelligence with Ukraine.
On November 16, it became known that Burns was in Kyiv during the massive Russian attack on Ukraine on November 15. According to media reports, he was at the US Embassy at the time of the attack.
It is known that before his visit to Ukraine, the head of the CIA met with the head of Russian intelligence, Sergei Naryshkin, in Turkey, where he warned the Russian Federation against using nuclear weapons in Ukraine.
