Speaking at the Ditchley Foundation in Britain, Burns said, “Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is the most urgent and acute geopolitical challenge to the world order today.”
His speech came a week after the leader of the Wagner Group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, staged a failed rebellion against the Russian military leadership.
Burns considered the war a “strategic failure” for Moscow that exposed the army’s weaknesses, and that it damaged the economy and made NATO bigger and stronger.
“Discontent with the war will continue to undermine the Russian leadership,” he added. “This discontent creates a once-in-a-generation opportunity for us at the CIA.”
He added, “We will not let it go to waste,” pointing out that the CIA recently published an advertisement on the Telegram platform informing the Russians about how to reach the agency through the “dark web”.
And he continued, “We got 2.5 million views in the first week, and we are very open to dealing.”
Burns’ speech also focused on China, which he said was “the only country with the intent to redraw the global order and, increasingly, with the economic, diplomatic, military and technological power to do so.”
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