What is the CIA director's assessment of Putin? In a lecture for the Foreign Policy Association, William J. Burns, now Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and former U.S. Ambassador to the Russian Federation, recollected his first meeting with Vladimir Putin in Moscow: “It was not subtle. It was almost defiantly charmless, but it was a very direct message and it reflected the fact that, in my experience, Putin is a very combustible combination of grievance and ambition and insecurity all wrapped up together […] Putin in my experience is kind of an apostle of payback."
This lecture was recorded in 2019. To view it in full, please click here: [ Ссылка ]
