WASHINGTON (Reuters) – CIA Director William Burns called Russian spy chief Sergei Naryshkin after last week’s abortive mutiny in Russia to assure the Kremlin the United States had not played it no role, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday.
Burns’ phone call with Naryshkin, the head of Russia’s foreign intelligence service SVR, took place this week and was the highest-level contact between the two governments since the attempted mutiny, the Wall Street Journal said.
The boss of the Russian mercenary group Wagner, Yevgeny Prigozhin, shocked the world by leading the armed revolt last week, only to halt it abruptly when his fighters approached Moscow.
President Joe Biden said on Monday that the brief uprising by Russian mercenaries against the Kremlin was part of a struggle within the Russian system and that the United States and its allies were not involved.
(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington; editing by Jasper Ward)