Jonathan Landay, Michael Martina

WASHINGTON (Reuters] – While Russia is not a threat, there has been no concrete evidence to support that fear, CIA Director William Burns indicated on Thursday.

Burns spoke at Georgia Tech about the “potential despair” and military setbacks Russian President Vladimir Putin has suffered since he and his government moved into Ukraine on February 24.

Burns said that because of these reasons “nobody can ignore the potential threat posed a resort to tactical nukes or low yield nuclear weapons,” Burns added.

That said, despite “rhetorical posturing” by the Kremlin about putting the world’s largest nuclear arsenal on high alert, “We haven’t seen a lot of practical evidence of the kind of deployments or military dispositions that would reinforce that concern.”

Burns responded to an ex-U.S. Senator Sam Nunn’s question. After his inaugural speech as the head of the U.S. spy chief agency since March 2021, Senator Sam Nunn made his comments.

A former U.S. diplomat claimed that U.S. intelligence agencies started collecting information last fall about a Putin plan to “major new invasion” of Ukraine.

Putin “stewed” grievances, ambitions and insecurity, and saw that the “window was closing” for Ukraine’s direction away from the West. Burns called Putin an “apostle to payback,”

U.S. intelligence is vital in Ukraine’s battle against Russian forces according to Burns. Burns was a diplomat who also served as U.S. ambassador for Moscow.

According to him, the crimes committed in Bucha by Ukrainian forces are “horrific.”

Russia denied the invading forces targeted civilians, and called the allegations that Russian forces executed Bucha civilians while they were occupying Bucha a “monstrous fraud” meant to discredit the Russian army.

According to the Kremlin, it initiated a special military operation in order to “liberate” Ukraine of nationalist extremists.