CIA Director William Burns reassured the Kremlin that the United States had no involvement in last weekend’s Wagner mutiny against Russian leadership, U.S. officials said.
Burns reportedly called Sergei Naryshkin, director of the Foreign Intelligence Service, this week to tell him the U.S. did not stoke internal tensions within Russia, according to the Wall Street Journal. The phone call was part of a larger strategy by the White House to convince Russian President Vladimir Putin the U.S. was not involved in paramilitary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin’s failed mercenary revolt.
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“The U.S. wasn’t involved. This is an internal Russian matter,” one official said, relaying the CIA chief’s message.
It remains unclear what the rest of the conversation entailed between the two spy directors. A White House official told the Wall Street Journal, “We’re not going to get into specifics of individual diplomatic discussions.”
Wagner Group’s uprising against Putin and the Kremlin lasted one day before ending in a truce brokered by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko. Prigozhin reportedly led the revolt due to the Kremlin’s mistreatment and mismanagement of his soldiers, who contributed to many of Russia’s key victories in Ukraine. Prigozhin was exiled to Belarus for his treasonous actions as part of the agreement.
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Earlier this week, President Joe Biden went on the record to say neither the U.S. nor Ukraine played a role in the Russian betrayal.
“We had to make sure we gave Putin no excuse — let me emphasize — we gave Putin no excuse to blame this on the West or to blame this on NATO,” Biden said at the White House on Monday. “We made clear that we were not involved. We had nothing to do with it. This was part of a struggle within the Russian system.”
