CIA Director Bill Burns met with his Russian intelligence counterpart in Ankara, Turkey, on Monday to stress the consequences if Russia deploys a nuclear weapon in Ukraine, according to a White House National Security Council official.
The official, who was not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity, said Burns and Sergei Naryshkin, head of Russia’s SVR spy agency, did not discuss the resolution of the war in Ukraine.
Before the meeting, White House officials said Burns planned to raise the cases of Phoenix Mercury basketball star Brittney Griner and Michigan corporate security executive Paul Whelan, two Americans detained in Russia over whom the government of Biden has been pushing for their release in a prisoner swap.
The Burns-Naryshkin meeting was the highest-ranking face-to-face meeting between US and Russian officials since before Russian President Vladimir Putin. order the invasion in February.
The official indicated that the Ukrainian authorities were informed before Burns’ trip to Turkey.
President Joe Biden, after meet with the president of chinaXi Jinping, on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit in Bali, Indonesia, told reporters that the two discussed Russia’s war in Ukraine. Biden added that they “reaffirmed our shared belief that the threat of the use of nuclear weapons is totally unacceptable.”
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the Russian state news agency rate that the meeting between Burns and Naryshkin “did take place” and that “it was an initiative on the American side.”
In Turkey, a senior adviser to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan confirmed that the country hosted the meeting between the heads of the Russian and US intelligence agencies on Monday. Communications director Fahrettin Altun told Associated Press that the meeting was “related to threats against international security, beginning with the use of nuclear weapons.”
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