CIA Director William Burns recently visited Ukraine, where he met with intelligence officials and President Volodymyr Zelensky, a US official confirmed to AFP on Friday.
The trip was not made public at the time, as Ukrainian forces continued a counteroffensive against Russian forces in the country’s east and south that began in June.
On this occasion, Mr. Burns reaffirmed “the U.S. commitment to sharing intelligence to help Ukraine defend itself against Russian aggression,” the U.S. official said on condition of anonymity.
According to US newspaper The Washington Post, which first reported on the trip, Ukrainian leaders presented plans to retake territories occupied by Russian forces.
The trip took place in June, the newspaper said. According to the US official, Mr. Burns “has been traveling to Ukraine continuously since the beginning a year before Russia’s latest invasion”.
The official said the trip came ahead of a 24-hour uprising on June 24 led by the Russian paramilitary group Wagner Yevgeny Prigozhin. The rebellion, considered the worst threat to Kremlin power in decades, was “not a topic of discussion”, he said.
Valery Salushny, the chief of staff of the Ukrainian army, said in an interview published by the Washington Post on Friday that a lack of weapons, particularly fighter jets, limited the Ukrainian counteroffensive.
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