With Friends Like These...Ukraine, The CIA And Betrayal

How to lose a war through cowardice, greed, naivety and deception

William Burns, CIA Director

I made a post on LinkedIn about a month ago regarding a little publicized meeting between CIA Director William Burns and Putin (via telephone) at the Kremlin in December 2021, only two months before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Almost no one outside a small circle of senior U.S. military and intelligence officials knew about the meeting, and no NATO allies were invited. Most glaringly, no Ukrainian officials were invited either, even though the only topic on the agenda for the meeting was a discussion regarding the anticipated invasion of Ukraine by Russia. Putin refused to admit that any invasion was imminent, but both men knew it was a matter of only days or weeks until the first Russian missiles would be launched westward into the Donbas from just inside the Russian border, and the first armored columns would start to move south towards Kyiv from their staging areas inside Belarus. Since Burns was not able to dissuade Putin from his obsession with invading and occupying Ukraine, the CIA Director did what any high-level cold warrior would do. He laid out the Soviet-US era rules under which both sides would abide during the Russian invasion (and probable occupation) of Ukraine.