Director of the Central Intelligence Agency Bill Burns testifies with Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines during a hearing on diversity in the intelligence community before the House (Select) Committee on Intelligence, on Capitol Hill, Washington, October 27, 2021.
Elizabeth Frantz | Reuters
CIA Director William Burns believed there was a real risk Russia could use nuclear weapons on the battlefield against Ukraine in the fall of 2022, although he said the West should not fear threats from Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“None of us should underestimate the risk of escalation,” Burns said in a moderated chat with UK intelligence chief Richard Moore at the Financial Times Weekend Festival on Saturday.
“There was a point in the fall of 2022 where I think there was a real risk of the potential use of tactical nuclear weapons,” Burns said.
“But I’ve never thought, and it’s my organization’s view, that we need to be unnecessarily intimidated. Putin is a bully. He’s going to keep saber-rattling,” Burns added.
At the direction of President Joe Biden, Burns met with his Russian counterpart Sergei Naryshkin in late 2022 to reiterate the “consequences” of nuclear escalation, the CIA director said.
“We’ve continued to be very direct about it,” Burns said Saturday.
The White House did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment outside of regular business hours.
More than two years after Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, the Kremlin has regularly signaled that it would consider using nuclear weapons in a war.
These insinuations intensified after Ukraine’s attack on Russia’s Kursk region in early August, and Putin promised a “befitting response”.
The Kursk offensive emboldened the Ukrainian military, Burns said, and in turn confounded the Kremlin: “It exposed some of the weaknesses of Putin’s Russia and its military.”
Russia’s official nuclear doctrine is defensive and based on the principle of deterrence. It authorizes the use of nuclear weapons in response to an attack with nuclear 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.
However, after Ukraine’s invasion of Kursk, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said last Sunday that the Kremlin was working on amendments to the nuclear code.
“There is a clear direction to adjust,” Ryabkov said, though he did not elaborate on when the changes to the nuclear doctrine would ultimately be finalized.
