CIA Chief made secret trip to Ukraine to discuss battle plans, ceasefire talks - Reports

WASHINGTON - The head of the CIA in a secret trip to Ukraine held talks with officials on an ambitious strategy to retake territory from Russia and open ceasefire talks with Moscow by year end, reported Sputnik.

CIA Director William Burns during the trip in June met with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Ukraine’s top intelligence officials, The Washington Post reported on Friday, citing officials familiar with the visit. The purpose of the visit was to reaffirm the Biden administration’s commitment to sharing intelligence designed to help Ukraine in the conflict, the report added.

Ukraine officials told Burns they aim to move artillery and missile systems near the boundary line of Crimea and push further into eastern Ukraine by the fall. Then Kyiv intends to open negotiations with Moscow for the first time since they broke down in March of last year, the report said, citing people involved with the planning.

Ukrainian officials said they hope by agreeing not to take Crimea, Russia would accept whatever security guarantees Kyiv can secure from the West, the report added.

One Ukrainian official told the media outlet that the "the US agrees that Ukraine should enter the negotiations from a strong position." The CIA refused to comment when asked about Burns' assessment of Kyiv's plans, the report said.

Burns’s trip occurred just before Wagner chief Yevgeniy Prigozhin's mutiny. The report said the US intelligence community had detected in mid-June that Prigozhin was plotting something, but those findings were not relayed to Ukrainian officials.

According to the report, Kyiv is under extraordinary pressure from Western allies that provided Ukraine with billions of dollars in weaponry ahead of the counteroffensive.

On Friday, The Wall Street Journal reported that Burns recently called his Russian counterpart, Sergey Naryshkin, to inform him that the United States had no involvement in Prigozhin's mutiny against the Russian government.

Ukraine launched its much-touted counteroffensive in early June after multiple postponements. The Russian Defence Ministry has repeatedly said that Ukrainian troops are trying to advance in the South Donetsk, Bakhmut, and Zaporizhzhia directions, but without success.

On Tuesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Ukraine lost as many as 259 tanks and 780 armored vehicles since the start of its counter-offensive. A number of Western media also noted the weak results of Kyiv's counteroffensive, while Zelenskyy himself admitted that the progress was "slower than desired." - BERNAMA-SPUTNIK