Ukraine-Russia: CIA sends nuclear warning to Vladimir Putin in secret Turkey meeting
The US and Russia’s top spies held secret talks after Ukraine retook the strategic city of Kherson, as Volodymyr Zelensky declared the “beginning of the end” of the war.
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As Ukraine recaptured the strategic city of Kherson, the United States dispatched its top spy to threaten Vladimir Putin with “consequences” if Russia resorted to using nuclear weapons.
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director William Burns met with Moscow’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) head Sergei Naryshkin in the first-known meeting of senior officials from the US and Russia since the invasion of Ukraine.
While the Kremlin refused to confirm or deny the secret meeting in Turkey, it was confirmed by a White House National Security Council source when questioned about Mr Burns travelling to Ankara on Monday local time.
“He is not conducting negotiations of any kind. He is not discussing settlement of the war in Ukraine,” the spokesperson told Reuters.
“He is conveying a message on the consequences of the use of nuclear weapons by Russia, and the risks of escalation to strategic stability.”
Timing of the meeting coincides with Ukraine recapturing the strategic city of Kherson, which former Russian prime minister Mikhail Kasyanov said was the “beginning of the end” of the war”, telling Sky News that the “final act” would come in a few months.
Western intelligence officials fear that the likelihood of Putin to order the use of tactical nuclear weapons increases the more his forces face defeats on the battlefield.
Sending the top official at the CIA to warn Russia’s top spy against using nuclear weapons reflects the United States’ increasing willingness to seek a negotiated end to the war before it escalates into a nuclear conflict.
But the White House source sought to allay Ukraine fears that it would negotiate with Russia without them.
“We briefed Ukraine in advance on his trip. We firmly stick to our fundamental principle: nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine,” the source said.
The secret meeting, the first since delegations from Russia and the U.S. met in person in Geneva on January 10, was first reported by Russian newspaper, Kommersant.
Russian presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov refused to discuss the meeting at a press conference, while issuing a thinly-veiled threat to Zelenskyy while he visited the liberated city of Kherson.
“We’re leaving this without comment. You know that this territory is part of the Russian Federation,” Peskov told journalists at a press briefing.
JOE BIDEN HAILS ‘SIGNIFICANT VICTORY’
US President Joe Biden has hailed Ukraine’s recapture of Kherson as a “significant, significant victory”, but said fighting would now slow going into winter and the war’s outcome “remains to be seen”.
“I can do nothing but applaud the courage, determination and capacity of the Ukrainian people,” Biden told a press conference in Indonesia where he is attending the G20 summit.
“I think you are going to see things slow down a bit because of the winter months,” he said, adding that it was up to Ukraine to determine the outcome of the conflict.
VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY VISITS KHERSON
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called the Russian withdrawal from Kherson “the beginning of the end of the war” on Monday as he met with soldiers in the southern city.
The liberation of Kherson after a grinding offensive that forced Russian to pull back its forces from the city was one of Ukraine’s biggest success so far of the nearly nine-month invasion and a stinging blow for the Kremlin.
Zelensky said that the country’s “strong army” was persistently reclaiming the territories taken by Russia since its invasion while also acknowledging the difficulties and the heavy human toll.
The Ukrainian army has now reclaimed three major areas of the country in its counteroffensives -- the area north of Kyiv, the northeastern region of Kharkiv and now Kherson and many neighbouring settlements.
RUSSIA FOREIGN MINISTER DISMISSES ILLNESS REPORTS
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Monday dismissed an Associated Press report that he had been taken to hospital with a heart condition, scolding Western journalists for what he cast as false reporting.
Associated Press, citing Indonesian officials, said that Lavrov had been taken to hospital after arriving on the island of Bali for a Group of 20 summit. AP said Lavrov, 72, had been treated for a heart condition.
“This, of course, is the height of fakery,” foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said.
Zakharova posted a video of Lavrov, President Vladimir Putin’s foreign minister since 2004, sitting outdoors on a patio, dressed in shorts and a T-shirt and reading documents.
Asked about the report, Lavrov said Western journalists had been writing falsely for a decade that Putin, 70, was ill.
UKRAINE VOWS TO KEEP RUSSIA OUT
Ukrainians in the liberated southern city of Kherson expressed a sense of relief on Sunday as they adjusted to life under Kyiv authorities after months of Russian occupation.
Residents said the Russians left a trail of destruction after an eight-month occupation, and an animal rights group said Moscow’s forces had even taken animals from a local zoo.
There were no scenes of jubilation on Sunday, an AFP correspondent said, but many locals said they felt a great sense of relief after Kyiv had wrested back control of the city.
Residents queued to get food, and many adults and children walked around wrapped in Ukrainian flags.
Some gathered on the city’s main square, mostly to use Starlink satellite internet and connect with relatives.
“They took everything with them. They cleared out the stores,” said Viktoria Dybovska, a 30-year-old sales clerk.
“They switched off the lights three or four days ago just as they were leaving. They simply vanished overnight,” added Antonina Vysochenko, 29.
Oleksandr Todorchuk, founder of UAnimals, an animal rights movement, said the Russian troops had stolen animals from a local zoo.
“They have taken most of the zoo’s collection to Crimea: from llamas and wolves to donkeys and squirrels,” he said on Facebook.
In a major humiliation for the Kremlin, the Russian army withdrew from the city of Kherson on Friday.
Kherson was one of four regions in Ukraine that Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed to have annexed in September.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Saturday that before fleeing Kherson, the Russians “destroyed all critical infrastructure – communication, water supply, heat, electricity.” Ukrainian television broadcasts have returned and officials said on Saturday that authorities were working to de-mine the city, record Russian crimes and restore power supplies.
On Saturday, in the formerly occupied village of Pravdyne, outside Kherson, returning locals embraced their neighbours, with some unable to hold back tears.
“Victory, finally!” said Svitlana Galak, who lost her eldest daughter in the war.
“Thank god we’ve been liberated and everything will now fall into place,” the 43-year-old told AFP.
“We are Ukraine,” added her husband, Viktor, 44.
Several disabled antitank mines and grenades could be seen in the settlement, which is home to a Polish Roman Catholic church, with a number of damaged buildings also visible.
While de-mining is carried out, a curfew has been put in place and movement in and out of the city has been limited, local authorities said.
The city of Kherson – which serves as a gateway to the Black Sea – was the first major urban hub to fall after Russia invaded in February.
Zelensky has said that Ukraine’s forces had established control over more than 60 settlements in the Kherson region.
Ukraine’s police chief Igor Klymenko said on Saturday that around 200 officers were erecting roadblocks and recording “crimes of the Russian occupiers”.
He urged Kherson residents to watch out for possible landmines laid by the Russian troops, saying one policeman had been wounded while de-mining an administrative building.
A woman and two children were taken to hospital with injuries after an explosive device went off near their car in the village of Mylove, police said.
Across the Dnipro River in the east, local pro-Moscow authorities in the district of Kakhovka issued an evacuation order to its employees to head to the Russian region of Krasnodar.
Ukraine’s armed forces said late Saturday that Russian forces were “strengthening fortification” of the defensive lines on the left bank of the Dnipro.
Kherson’s full recapture opens a gateway for Ukraine to the entire Kherson region, with access to both the Black Sea in the west and the Sea of Azov in the east.
On Saturday, an increasingly isolated Vladimir Putin spoke by phone with Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, pledging to intensify political and trade co-operation, the Kremlin said.
Shunned by the West over his offensive in Ukraine, the 70-year-old leader will not travel to Indonesia for the G20 leaders’ summit next week.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken hailed the “remarkable courage” of Ukraine’s military and people and vowed US support “will continue for as long as it takes” to defeat Russia.
In London, British Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said Russia’s “strategic failure” in Kherson could prompt ordinary Russians to question the war.
“Ordinary people of Russia must surely ask themselves: ‘What was it all for?’” The Kremlin insists that Kherson remains part of Russia.
After enduring more than eight months of Russian soldiers occupying her village near Kherson, Svitlana Galak said she cried “tears of happiness” when Ukrainian soldiers arrived to liberate them.
“I don’t know when the Russians arrived, but I only know one thing – that yesterday, or the day before yesterday, I saw a Ukrainian soldier and I was relieved,” the 43-year-old told AFP.
“I had tears of happiness, that finally Ukraine is liberated,” she said.
Her village Pravdyne is located about 50 kilometres northwest of the city of Kherson that, along with the eponymous region, was captured by Russian forces shortly after their invasion in late February.
On Friday, Russia said it had pulled back more than 30,000 troops in the southern region, with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy declaring Kherson “ours” as residents reacted with joy and jubilation.
Galak is one of about 180 residents of Pravdyne, a small village in the middle of an agricultural plain that had some 1,000 residents before the war.
Some of the roofs of buildings appear blasted off, and several homes have been destroyed. Debris of anti-mine parts and explosives litter the village’s fields – a remnant of bombing campaigns.
Galak’s eldest daughter had been killed in a bombing raid on the village.
“I will tell you honestly, I was not happy that Russians were here, and my child died. It is hard for me,” she said.
With AFP
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