CIA director William Burns met yesterday with Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service director Sergei Naryshkin in an unannounced meeting in Ankara, Turkey. A White House spokesperson yesterday went out of his way to assure that the secretive meeting should not concern Kiev, saying that Burns “doesn’t negotiate. He is not discussing a settlement in Ukraine.” Rather, he was there simply to set Russia straight about its contemplation of using nuclear weapons (which it hadn’t made).
Today, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby was a bit more forthcoming. As reported by Bloomberg, Kirby said: “This was really about keeping the channels of communication with Russia open on issues that affect both our security’s futures.” It was “all about routine channels of communication” that Washington has with Moscow at various levels. Kirby cited other discussions held by both U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, with Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of Staff Gen. Valery Gerasimov. By doing so, Kirby said, the U.S. is “making sure that … there won’t be any miscalculations. The main purpose was to talk about issues around strategic stability.”