CIA Director Bill Burns briefed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv last week on the US’ expectations for Russia’s battlefield planning in the spring, according to a US official and two Ukrainian sources familiar with the meeting.
The secret meeting comes as US officials are closely monitoring a potential Russian offensive in the coming months – and in the midst of a fraught debate between the US and its European allies over whether to send increasingly sophisticated and long-range weaponry to Ukraine. Western defense leaders are scheduled to meet Friday to discuss further weapons shipments to Ukraine.
“Director Burns traveled to Kyiv where he met with Ukrainian intelligence counterparts as well as President Zelensky and reinforced our continued support for Ukraine in its defense against Russian aggression,” a US official said in a statement.
Burns, a veteran diplomat, has become a trusted interlocutor in Kyiv, and last week’s trip was not his first. He made two known back-to-back trips to Kyiv in October and November of last year, including one that took place amid a spate of Russian missile strikes across the country.
Germany has a “fundamental problem” with the idea of sending its Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine, Poland’s deputy foreign minister said in a radio interview Friday morning.
Pawel Jablonski told the RMF FM radio talk show: “Less and less countries today have problems with the transfer of tanks. Today, Germany has a fundamental problem.” He said Poland and other countries were “trying to convince” Berlin to agree to send the tanks to Ukraine.
“We have been hearing such stories for a long time, that if we hand over some weapons to Ukraine, then we will provoke Putin. But he acts in such a way that only hard power can stop him,” Jablonski said.
Some background: This comes as the US is stuck in a standoff with Germany over whether to send tanks to Ukraine. In recent days, German officials have indicated they won’t send their Leopard tanks to Ukraine, or allow any other country with the German-made tanks in their inventory to do so, unless the US also agrees to send its M1 Abrams tanks to Kyiv – something the Pentagon has said for months it has no intention of doing given the logistical costs of maintaining them.