CIA seizing the opportunity of weakened Putin to recruit Russian spies
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The US is seizing the opportunity of a weakened Vladimir Putin to recruit spies inside Russia, the head of the CIA has said.
“Disaffection with the war will continue to gnaw away at the Russian leadership,” he said of the spying opportunities that had been created.
“We are not going to let it go to waste.”
“China is the only country with both the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military and technological power to do so,” he said.
Mr Burns also said that occasionally declassifying secrets during the war, and leaking them to the media, had wrongfooted Putin.
“This has denied Putin the false narratives that I have watched him so often invent in the past, putting him in the uncomfortable and unaccustomed position of being on the back foot,” he said.
But despite his humiliation in Ukraine and domestic policy failures in Russia, Mr Burns said that Putin was still a dangerous man who “harbours great grievances, ambitions and insecurities”.
“The one thing I have learnt is that it is a mistake to underestimate Putin’s fixation about controlling Ukraine and its choices,” he said.
“We recently used social media, our first video post on Telegram in fact, to let brave Russians know how to contact us safely through the Dark Web,” he said during the lecture.
“We had 2.5 million views in the first week and we are very much open for business.”
Telegram is by far the most popular Russian-language messaging and news app.
It is also considered to be a far freer place for Russians to exchange information than the country’s internet, which the Kremlin tightly controls.
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