CIA Director Bill Burns testifies next to Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines during a House Intelligence (Select) Committee meeting on diversity in the intelligence community, on Capitol Hill in Washington, October 27, 2021.
Elizabeth Frantz Reuters
CIA Director William Burns believes there is a real risk in the autumn of 2022 that Russia could use nuclear weapons on the battlefield against Ukraine, although he said the West should not fear the threat of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“None of us should take lightly the risk of escalation,” Burns said in a moderated conversation with Britain’s secret intelligence chief Richard Moore at the Financial Times Weekend Festival.
“There will be a moment in the fall of 2022 when I think there is a real risk of the use of tactical nuclear weapons,” Burns said.
“I have never thought, however, and this is the view of the agency, that we should be unnecessarily intimidated by that. Putin’s bully. He will continue saber-rattle,” added Burns.
At the behest of President Joe Biden, Burns met with his Russian counterpart, Sergey Naryshkin, in late 2022 to discuss the “consequences” of nuclear escalation, the CIA director said.
“We’re continuing to be very direct about this,” Burns said Saturday.
The White House did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment sent outside regular business hours.
In the more than two years since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, the Kremlin has regularly signaled that it would consider using nuclear weapons in a war.
The hint has grown louder since Ukraine’s attack on Russia’s Kursk region in early August, which Putin promised would be matched by a “worthy response.”
The Kursk attack boosted the morale of the Ukrainian forces, Burns said, and in turn, rattled the Kremlin: “This has exposed some of the vulnerabilities of Putin’s Russia and the military.”
Russia’s official nuclear doctrine is defensive in nature and founded on the principle of deterrence. It allows the use of nuclear weapons in response to a nuclear attack or other weapons of mass destruction against Russia or its allies, as well as conventional attacks that threaten the existence of the Russian state.
But in the wake of Ukraine’s attack on Kursk, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said last week that the Kremlin was working on an amendment to the nuclear code.
“There is a clear direction to make an adjustment,” Ryabkov said, although he did not specify the details of whether the change in nuclear doctrine would be completed.