Bill Burns, director of the CIA, the US intelligence agency, is leading a delegation of senior US officials in Moscow to a series of two-day meetings with Russian officials, a US embassy spokesman said on Tuesday (two).
“They are meeting with members of the Russian government to discuss a number of issues in the bilateral relationship,” the spokesman said, without giving further details.
One such meeting was between Burns and the head of Russia’s national security council, Nikolai Patrushev. A terse statement by the powerful council said the two sides discussed “Russian-American relations.” The meeting was not announced in advance and the CIA, which does not discuss the director’s agenda, declined to comment.
The rare – but not unheard of – meetings between the CIA chief and senior Russian security officials come amid persistent tensions between Washington and Moscow.
The Biden government has imposed sanctions on Russia related to electoral interference, the poisoning of dissident critic Alexei Navalny and cyber attacks on US interests. Authorities have been cautiously watching recent Russian troop movements across the Ukrainian border. Russia also remains under sanctions for its annexation of Crimea in 2014.
Still, the United States sees opportunities for cooperation with Russia, particularly in arms control, and the intelligence community under previous administrations has sought points of mutual interest with Moscow.
“We periodically meet with our Russian intelligence colleagues for the same reason as our predecessors – to keep Americans safe,” wrote former President Trump’s first CIA director, Mike Pompeo, in a letter advocating a meeting with senior CIA officials. Russian intelligence in Washington in 2018. This meeting drew attention mainly because it took place on American soil, with officials who were under US sanction.
Burns, a veteran diplomat, has extensive experience in Russia. He served as US ambassador there from 2005 to 2008.
The Biden administration has maintained an “open, direct and frank dialogue” with Russia on the issue of cyber attacks, said Anne Neuberger, national security adviser for emerging and cyber technologies, at an event in Washington last week.
Biden pressured Putin to quell a wave of harmful ransomware attacks on US organizations – including critical infrastructure – from Russia and announced the start of US-Russia cybersecurity talks at the end of a summit meeting with Putin in Switzerland in June.
The US government “shared information with Russia about criminal ransomware activity conducted on its territory,” a senior government official told reporters last month, speaking on condition of anonymity.
It is unclear whether the negotiations produced substantive results, however. Nobelium, the Russian hacker group behind the SolarWinds hack, has compromised up to 14 tech companies since May as part of another apparent spying campaign, Microsoft said last week.
(This text has been translated from English; read the original here)
Reference: CNN Brasil
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