Armed mutiny shows damage Putin has done to Russia – CIA Director

William Burns, the director of the US Central Intelligence Agency, said on Saturday that the armed mutiny of Yevgeny Prigozhin, leader of Wagner Group, had shown the corrosive effect the war against Ukraine has had on Russia.

Source: Reuters, quoted by European Pravda

Quote: "It is striking that Prigozhin preceded his actions with a scathing indictment of the Kremlin's mendacious rationale for the invasion of Ukraine and of the Russian military leadership's conduct of the war," Burns, the former US ambassador to Moscow, said in a lecture at the Britain's Ditchley Foundation in Oxfordshire, England.

"The impact of those words and those actions will play out for some time – a vivid reminder of the corrosive effect of Putin's war on his own society and his own regime," he said.

Burns cast the mutiny as "an armed challenge to the Russian state," but said it was an "internal Russian affair in which the United States has had and will have no part".

US General Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, considers it too early to draw conclusions about whether Vladimir Putin's position has been shaken by the attempted rebellion in Russia by mercenaries of the Wagner Group Private Military Company (PMC).

As reported, CIA director William Burns secretly visited Ukraine in June to talk with Ukrainian leadership about the counteroffensive; he was told about plans to regain large areas by the end of the year.

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