Kremlin says US intelligence conclusions cited by Reuters 'not true'

The Kremlin said on Monday that U.S. intelligence was wrong if it believed Russian President Vladimir Putin wanted to seize all of all Ukraine and parts of Europe that were once part of the former Soviet empire.



Reuters cited six unidentified sources last week as saying U.S. intelligence reports continued to warn that Putin has not abandoned what it called his aim of capturing all Ukraine and reclaiming parts of Europe once in the former Soviet bloc.



Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters Moscow did not know how reliable the sources quoted by Reuters were, but that if the report was accurate then the U.S. intelligence conclusions were wrong.



Putin sent tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine in February 2022, and Russian forces now control about a fifth of the country. Some European and Ukrainian leaders have accused Putin of having ambitions beyond Ukraine.



The Russian president has never said in public that he wants to conquer the whole of Ukraine. But he has said repeatedly that Russian forces will take more of Ukraine if Kyiv does not agree to cede the remaining part of the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine that Ukrainian forces still control.