President Joe Biden's nominee for the position Director of CIA, William Burns, said during his US Senate confirmation hearing on Wednesday that underestimating Russia is always a mistake
WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 24th February, 2021) President Joe Biden's nominee for the position Director of CIA, William Burns, said during his US Senate confirmation hearing on Wednesday that underestimating Russia is always a mistake.
"It's always a mistake to underestimate Putin's Russia. While Russia may be in many ways a declining power, it can be at least as disruptive under Putin's leadership as rising powers like China," Burns told the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Burns pointed out the United States has to be clear-eyed on how threats to the United States may emerge and emphasized that responding to those threats with firmness and consistency is very important.
"There is no substitute for firmness and consistency in dealing with Putin's Russia and working as closely as we can with our allies and partners who share the same concerns," Burns said. "The reality, I think, in terms of American policy of US-Russian relations, as long as Vladimir Putin is the leader of Russia, we are going to be operating with a pretty narrow bend of possibilities - from the very sharply competitive to the very nastily adversarial."
Burns served as the US Ambassador to Russia from 2005 to 2008. He retired from the US Foreign Service in 2014 after a diplomatic career of 33 years.
