WHERE DOES IT END?

CIA Director Downplays Putin’s Ukraine Plans—But Can’t Define Victory

CIA director William Burns and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan both provided a look at the U.S.’s support for Ukraine—and its limits.

Marking the one-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, CIA director William Burns said Russian President Vladimir Putin was “entirely too confident” in thinking he could force the steadfast nation into surrender.

Burns sat down with CBS’s Margaret Brennan, where he discussed the intelligence community’s perspective on Russia’s plan forward in the war. He said his conversations with Sergey Naryshkin, the head of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, were “dispiriting,” and that Russia displayed an arrogance that didn’t mirror Ukraine’s persistent defense.

“It was a defiant attitude on the part of Mr. Naryshkin as well a sense of cockiness and hubris, reflecting Putin’s own view,” he said. “He believes he can grind down the Ukrainians and wear down our European allies, that political fatigue will eventually set in. In my view, Putin’s view of Americans we’ve got attention deficit disorder and we’ll move on to another issue eventually. Putin, in many ways, I think, believes today that he cannot win for a while, but he can’t lose.”

He also reiterated the U.S.’s support for the war-torn country, mirroring comments National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan made on multiple Sunday talk shows. Both interviews followed intelligence reports that indicated China was considering supporting Russia’s efforts with ammunition and vehicles.

In a Meet the Press interview, Sullivan said the U.S. was committed to supporting whatever Ukraine’s version of victory looked like, but he demurred when he was asked to define it himself. He also said the U.S. would not commit to sending F-16 aircraft to the country.

He also would not say whether the U.S. would support efforts to reclaim Crimea, even if Ukraine, as it has in the past, declares it as part of a win.

“The critical thing right now is that they need to take back the territory in the South and the East that they are currently focused on. And we need to give them the tools to be able to do that,” Sullivan said. “Where we are right now is that we need to be focused on the immediate term, because it is critical that we move fast and we move decisively to help them take back the territory across that line of contact that Russian troops are currently occupying.”

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Corbin BoliesMedia Reporter

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