According to US newspapers, CIA Director William Burns visited Ukraine in secret before the Wagner Group’s armed uprising against Moscow.
According to The Washington Post, in June, the US spy chief visited Kyiv to meet with his intelligence counterparts and the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky.
read more: Blinken instructed US diplomats to stay mute on Wagner mutiny
Officials from Ukraine discussed strategies to reclaim Russian-occupied territory and launch ceasefire talks by the end of the year at the meeting, the daily added.
Under the condition of anonymity, a US official said Burns went to Kyiv to reiterate “the US commitment to sharing intelligence to help Ukraine defend against Russian aggression.”
The official continued by saying that the CIA director had “traveled to Ukraine as he has done frequently since the beginning of Russia’s recent aggression more than a year ago.”
The official added that the most recent trip occurred before Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Wagner chief, staged a 24-hour mutiny, but insisted that the uprising “was not a topic of discussion.”
In an audio message shared on Telegram on June 23, Prigozhin accused Russia’s military leadership of ordering a rocket attack on the group’s field camps in Ukraine, where Russia has been engaged in military operations, killing “huge numbers” of his paramilitary forces. Moscow’s authorities, however, vehemently refuted his assertion.
In an effort to overthrow the military hierarchy, he also asserted that he had taken control of Rostov-on-Don in the south.
The Wagner leader agreed to direct his troops back toward the Russian capital after negotiations with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko aimed at defusing the situation. The mutiny, which lasted less than 24 hours, was put to an end.
Then the Kremlin declared that the criminal case it had previously brought against the Wagner Group’s CEO had been dropped.
The US spy agencies “strongly suspected,” according to a New York Times report, that Prigozhin had military plans against Russia days before he gave the order for his troops to march on Moscow.
US officials chose to remain silent regarding Prigozhin’s plans, though. The excuse given, according to the report, was that if they spoke up, Putin might have accused them of planning a coup.
There is “no doubt” the mutiny was planned by the secret services of the United States, Britain, and Israel, according to Margarita Simonyan, the head of Russia’s state broadcaster, who was also quoted in Russian media.
Russia has been made aware by the United States that it had no part in the uprising.
According to a Friday Wall Street Journal article, Burns called Sergei Naryshkin, the head of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), to insist that Washington was not involved in the mutiny.
According to the WSJ, the phone call represented the highest level of communication between the two governments since the attempted mutiny.
Additionally, US Vice President Joe Biden stated on Monday that the Wagner group’s rebellion against the Kremlin was a part of a struggle within the Russian system and emphasized that neither the US nor its allies were a part of it.
