Transcript: Vladimir Putin ‘doesn’t believe he can afford to lose’ — William Burns, CIA director

The transcript of a discussion between William Burns, CIA director, and Edward Luce, Financial Times US national editor, took place on May 7 in Washington.

Financial Times: You traveled to Moscow to talk to the US president. What did you think was going to happen when you talked to Putin six months ago?

William Burns has dealt with and watched President Putin for many years, and he has seen him stew in a very combustible combination of grievance and ambition.

As his grip on power has tightened, his risk appetite has grown as well.

I came away from those conversations very troubled. It didn't seem to me that President Putin had made a decision to go to war. He was defiantly leaning that way. From his point of view, Russia can't be a major power without a deferential Ukraine.

He believed that the Russian military could win quickly and easily, thanks to the investment he had made in his military. He thought that our allies in Europe were distracted by political transitions in Germany and by elections in France. He was convinced that he had created a sanctions-proofed economy. He put away a large amount of hard currency.

He was wrong on each of those counts in the first few weeks of the war. The assumptions were flawed. The second phase of his offensive is as risky as the first because of his concentrated forces in the east of Ukraine and in the south.

Do you think that Putin is listening to what he needs to hear?

He doesn't believe he can afford to lose and that's why he's in a frame of mind. I don't think this means that Putin is deterred at this point because he staked so much on the choice that he made to launch this invasion, I think he's convinced that doubling down still will enable him to make progress.

I have to ask you about the new coinage, which is pre-emptive intelligence. What made you so confident after your meeting with Putin?

It was the detail and precision of what we were seeing in terms of Russian planning, combined with what I was trying to say before, which was Vladimir Putin's absolute conviction that the window was closing for him to use force.

When the US president decided to declassify intelligence, I think it helped to deny Putin something that I have watched him do for many years, which was to create false narratives to stage false flag operations. He was determined in the run-up to the war to try to create a pretext for that invasion, to try to create instances where he could try to pin the blame on the Ukrainians for provoking hostilities, and by exposing a lot of those false narratives.

According to news reports, the US gave data to the Ukrainians that allowed them to target Russian generals and the Moskva war ship. I would like you to comment on the stories.

It is irresponsible. When people talk too much, it's very risky, whether it's leaking in private or talking in public about specific intelligence issues. The Department of Defense and the White House have spoken about this publicly.

It's a big mistake to underestimate the intelligence capabilities of the Ukrainians. This is their country. They have more information than we do, and they have more intelligence than we do.

The escalatory risk of this situation is one of the things on everybody's mind. Since the Cuban missile crisis, we haven't seen a nuclear leader talk this often. What could happen if a test above the Black Sea or battlefield nuclear weapons were to happen?

We don't see any evidence of Russian planning, deployment or use of nuclear weapons as an intelligence community. We can't take lightly the kind of rhetoric we've heard from the Russian leadership.

I think it's important for both Russians and Americans to remember that we are still the only nuclear power in the world. We control 90 per cent of the world's nuclear weapons and even in the worst stages of the cold war, both Russian and American leaderships showed a realization that we had unique capabilities but also unique responsibilities. It is crucial that the Russian leadership remembers that responsibility not just to Russians and Americans, but to the entire global community as well.

For obvious reasons, we didn't hear much about theFinlandisation of Ukraine before the war. As soon as next week, we're going to get the Nato-isation of Sweden and possibly Finland, which Putin has mentioned as one of his red lines.

These are the choices the Finns and Swedes will make. In many ways, these are choices that Putin himself has driven by the threats that he has made against the west in general.

What lessons do you think China is learning from the situation in Ukraine, and what do you think they are learning about Putin?

I would not underestimate the commitment of the President to his partnership with Russia. Three weeks before Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine, China and Russia issued a joint statement proclaiming a friendship without limits.

Over the last 10 or 11 weeks, the bitter experience of Russia in Ukraine has shown that friendship does have some limits.

It strikes us that China's reputation can be damaged by association with the brutishness of Russia and the economic uncertainty that surrounds it.

The Chinese leadership is looking at what lessons they can learn from Ukraine about their ambitions in Taiwan. I don't think that it has eroded the determination of Xi to gain control over Taiwan. It's something that's affecting their calculation about how and when to do that.

I think they were surprised by the Russian military performance. I think they have been struck by the ways in which Ukrainians have resisted. I think they have been struck by the way in which the Transatlantic Alliance has come together to impose economic costs on Russia as a result of that aggression. I think these are things that they are weighing carefully.

James Politi wrote it in Washington.