CIA chief Burns secretly visited Kyiv and got acquainted with ambitious plan to liberate occupied territories, - Washington Post
In early June, Director of the US Central Intelligence Agency William Burns paid an unannounced visit to Kyiv and met with Ukraine’s political and military leadership to discuss plans to counter Russian aggression.
This was reported by The Washington Post, citing officials familiar with the visit, Censor.NET reports.
"During a secret visit to Ukraine by CIA Director William Burns earlier this month, Ukrainian officials presented an ambitious strategy for returning Russian-occupied territories and starting negotiations with Moscow on a ceasefire by the end of the year," the statement said.
According to the newspaper, Burns' trip, which was not previously reported, included meetings with President Zelensky and the Ukrainian intelligence community. The visit came at a crucial time when the Ukrainian Armed Forces were making efforts to gain the upper hand in a long-awaited counter-offensive but had not yet deployed most of their trained and equipped assault brigades.
It is specified that the purpose of the CIA chief's trip was to reaffirm the Biden administration's commitment to intelligence sharing to help Ukraine defend itself against Russian aggression.
The newspaper cited sources as saying that privately, the military command in Kyiv had told Burns that it was confident in its goals to regain a significant part of the territory by autumn; to move artillery and missile systems closer to the line of demarcation with Russia-controlled Crimea; to move further into eastern Ukraine and then to start negotiations with Moscow.
"Russia will negotiate only when it feels threatened," the newspaper quoted one of the Ukrainian officials as saying.
The publication points out that the Ukrainian Armed Forces have suffered significant losses as they are forced to overcome dense minefields and well-fortified areas. The difficult terrain has left Ukrainian troops vulnerable to Russian air and missile attacks. Zelenskyy acknowledged that the counter-offensive is "slower than we would like," and officials confirmed the destruction of several Leopard 2 tanks and Bradly fighting vehicles, the newspaper writes.
However, Ukraine's Defence Minister Oleksii Reznikov rebutted the sceptics, saying that the "main event" was still to come. For his part, Commander-in-Chief Valerii Zaluzhny called for patience, saying that the offensive was being conducted as diligently as possible.
Military analysts say that Ukraine's goal of forcing Russia to negotiate is ambitious, given Russia's strong defence, but they do not rule out that it could happen.
