CIA Director Bill Burns testifies next to Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines during a House Intelligence Committee (Select) hearing on diversity in the intelligence community, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Oct. 27, 2021.
Elizabeth Frantz | Reuters
Director of CIA William Burns believe there is a real risk in the fall of 2022 that Russia can be used nuclear weapons on the battlefield against UkraineAlthough he said the West should not be threatened by the Russian president Vladimir Putinthreat of.
“None of us should take the risk of escalation lightly,” Burns said on Saturday in a coordinated conversation with Britain’s secret intelligence chief Richard Moore at Financial Times Weekend.
“There will come a point in the fall of 2022 where I think there is a real risk of the use of tactical nuclear weapons,” Burns said.
“However, I have never thought, and this is the view of my agency, that we should be unnecessarily threatened by that. Putin is a bully. He will continue to threaten,” Burns added.
In President Joe BidenAt the president’s behest, Burns met with his Russian counterpart, Sergey Naryshkin, in late 2022 to reiterate the “consequences” of nuclear escalation, the CIA director recounted.
“We continue to be very upfront about that,” Burns said Saturday.
The White House did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment sent outside regular business hours.
In the more than two years since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, the Kremlin has frequently has signaled that it will consider using nuclear weapons in war
Those insinuations have become more apparent since Ukraine’s attack on Russia’s Kursk region in early August, to which Putin has pledged to respond with a “deserved response.”
Burns said the Kursk offensive had boosted morale in the Ukrainian army and in turn worried the Kremlin: “It exposed some weaknesses in Russia and Putin’s army.”
Russia’s official nuclear doctrine is defensive in nature and based on the principle of deterrence. It allows the use of nuclear weapons in response to an attack with nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction against Russia or its allies, as well as a conventional attack that threatens the existence of the Russian state.
But after Ukraine’s attack on Kursk, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said last Sunday that the Kremlin was working nuclear law amendment.
“There is a clear direction for making adjustments,” Ryabkov said, although he did not detail whether changes to the nuclear doctrine would eventually be finalized.
