In rare comments, a top CIA official has given the US spy agency's view of Ukraine's ongoing Kursk incursion which began on Aug.6 and which has resulted in hundreds of square miles of Russian territory coming under Ukrainian military control. It undoubtably marks the single biggest escalation in the war to date, given Kiev is seeking to 'return' the war to Russia.
CIA's number two, deputy director David Cohen, said it is going to be a "difficult fight" for the Russians as they try to wrest their territory back. He was addressing the Intelligence and National Security Summit in Washington on Wednesday.
"We can be certain that Putin will mount a counteroffensive to try to reclaim that territory," Cohen said per Reuters. "I think our expectation is that that will be a difficult fight for the Russians."
He described that the challenge for Putin and military leadership is that they have to deal with a "front line now within Russian territory" but also the "reverberations back in his own society that they have lost a piece of Russian territory."
Cohen further revealed the CIA has been discussing and analyzing Ukraine's goals and aims of the operation: "They are remaining in Russia, building defenses, and, as best as we can tell from our conversations, there seems to be intent on retaining some of that territory for some period of time," he explained.
Part of Kiev's aim with the high-risk cross-border offensive has been to humiliate and distract the Kremlin, possibly leading to destabilization of Moscow's Ukraine operations. Yet so far Russia has continued to make clear gains in the Donbass, where the front-line fighting is.
The CIA's Cohen in the new remarks admitted that Russian gains have been steady but that this has come at an "extraordinary cost" in terms of lives and resources expended.
"But at the end of the day, none of it is a game changer in a strategic sense," for the Russians, he went on to emphasize. The same could more easily be said about Ukraine's Kursk incursion, but as expected for a US intelligence official he only kept the negative remarks for Russia.
Interestingly, Russian media picked up on the following exchange:
Cohen declined to answer a direct question about whether he and his colleagues at Langley were just as "surprised" by Ukraine’s incursion, noting that the significance and implications of the attack "remain to be seen."
Ukraine reportedly did not consult its Western sponsors before launching the operation, leaving them puzzled over its ultimate goals.
It is highly likely that the CIA and Pentagon not only had foreknowledge of the operation, but even helped in the planning and execution, official White House statements to the contrary notwithstanding.
Western weapons have also been seen all over the Kursk battlefield, even including Western main battle tanks such as the UK's Challenger II. There have also reportedly been US M1 Abrams sightings on Russian territory.
We explained previously that even though White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre claimed that the US didn’t know about Ukraine’s plans to invade Russia’s Kursk Region, this is too unbelievable since there’s no way that Western intelligence services didn’t even catch a hint of it, not to mention likely participate in the preparations. The NY Times earlier this year confirmed that the CIA is deeply embedded within Ukraine and its intelligence apparatus.
President Putin has reaffirmed during recent security meetings with high-ranking government officials that Ukraine and the Kursk crisis is part of the West's proxy war being waged on Russia.