The warning resonates all the louder as it emanates from the director of the CIA. In an interview granted on Monday to the US channel CBS News on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the US counterintelligence agency, its head, William Burns, warned the world against the reactions of a “cornered” Russian president.
“A cornered Putin with his back to the wall can be dangerous and reckless and is remembered for the wrong assumptions he made before the war. I think he is now basing his approach on equally wrong assumptions, believing that he can stand up to the Ukrainians, the US and the West,” he said.
“He thinks he’s stronger than everyone”
As an echo of these fears, the Kremlin raised its tone again on Wednesday, assuring that the annexed regions in Ukraine would be “Russian forever” and that its soldiers would recover the territories lost on the front. Russia has also carried out drone strikes 80 km south of Kyiv.
At the same time, the Ukrainian counteroffensive continued to advance, with local authorities announcing that same day that they had regained ground in Lugansk province.
But William Burns hinted that Vladimir Putin was impervious to such denials that reality brought into his speeches:
“He has a fierce confidence in his own judgements. He thinks he’s stronger than everyone else.”
25 million mobilizable men, 9000 nuclear warheads
Patrick Sauce, a foreign affairs columnist for BFMTV, quantified the danger posed by the struggling autocrat. “We are talking about a man who potentially 25 million people against Ukraine in case of total mobilization, we are talking about a man who has 9000 nuclear warheads at his disposal,” he listed.
“The threat existed before, it will continue to exist. But the threat is neither greater nor less than yesterday’s,” however Patrick Sauce stressed.
General David Petraeus, one of the predecessors of William Burns at the head of the CIA, even relativized this threat this Monday on ABC.
“Putin can’t do anything else at this stage, he will continue to lose on the battlefield,” he said.
He brushed aside the dictator’s nuclear blackmail, promising in the event of an atomic attack that NATO would “eliminate all identifiable Russian forces on the battlefield in Ukraine, Crimea and even the Black Sea.”
Source: BFM TV
