CIA Director William Burns said on Saturday that Russia’s displeasure with the war in Ukraine is a unique opportunity to recruit spies that his agency will not let go, Reuters and Agerpres news agencies reported.

CIA Director Bill BurnsPhoto: Sipa USA / ddp USA / Profimedia

“Discontent with the war will continue to grate on the Russian leadership under a steady diet of state propaganda and repression,” the head of the US Central Intelligence Agency said during a lecture at the Ditchley Foundation in Oxfordshire, UK.

“This disaffection creates a unique opportunity for us at the CIA – essentially a people-based intelligence service. We’re not going to let it go,” added Burns, the former US ambassador to Moscow.

According to the director of the CIA, the armed uprising led by the boss of Wagner’s mercenary group Yevgeny Prigozhin became a challenge to the Russian state, which showed the corrosive effect of the war in Ukraine.

Burns said the rebellion was “an internal Russian affair in which the United States played no part and has no part.”

In May, the Kremlin said Russian services were monitoring Western espionage after the CIA released a video urging Russian citizens to contact the US agency through a secure Internet channel.

The video is accompanied by text in Russian that the agency wants to contact the military, intelligence specialists, diplomats, academics and people with information about the Russian economy and its leadership.

Read also:

  • VIDEO “Contact us!” How the CIA is trying to convince Russians to betray their country
  • The CIA instructs ordinary Russians to spy for the US

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