Bill Burns calls Vladimir Putin a ‘bully’ whose ‘sabre-rattling’ should not always be taken literally

Western leaders should not be intimidated by Kremlin threats of nuclear escalation, the head of the CIA said on Saturday, and be willing to consider allowing Anglo-French Storm Shadow missiles to be used inside Russia.

Bill Burns, on a visit to London alongside the head of MI6, said the US had brushed off a previous Russian nuclear scare in autumn 2022, demonstrating that threats from Moscow should not always be taken literally.

“Putin’s a bully. He’s going to continue to sabre rattle from time to time,” Burns said. “We cannot afford to be intimidated by that sabre rattling … we got to be mindful of it. The US has provided enormous support for Ukraine, and I’m sure the president will consider other ways in which we can support them.”

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  • @occhionautEnglish
    10•10 days ago

    Take the recent Chinese intelligence scandals coming out about their nukes having water in the fuel tanks and silo caps that cant retract. I believe wholeheartedly that corruption has stolen most of the nails from the thermonuclear hands in both Russia and China. Probably even NK too, to some extent.

    • @[email protected]English
      4•9 days ago

      Well sure, for land-based static and mobile systems, but it’s an open secret that the only division of the Russian military that has halfway-decent funding on a consistent basis since the fall of the USSR is their SSBN fleet.

      I’m not saying that meaningfully changes the calculus imo, but if any of their shit is going to work, it’s probably going to be the boomers (subs, not the generation)