Biden makes ex-US ambassador to Russia candidate for CIA director

US President-elect Joe Biden has nominated former US Ambassador to Russia William Burns to the post of CIA director, follows from an official press release. The US Senate will have to approve Burns' candidacy.

"Burns is an exemplary diplomat with years of experience on the world stage," Joe Biden said. "The American people will sleep easy if he takes over as director of the CIA."

Burns will become the first career diplomat at the head of the CIA, but it is difficult to imagine a better candidate for Biden now, writes Axios. Burns is equidistant from both parties, has direct experience of diplomacy in the Middle East, including in the Iranian direction, where the new administration intends to restore the nuclear deal , and in Russia.

Burns' 33-year diplomatic career began in 1982. He has held a number of national security positions during five US administrations. From 2005 to 2008, Burns was the US Ambassador to Russia, then the US First Deputy Secretary of State, and since 2015, he headed the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

The director of the CIA is now career intelligence officer Gina Haspel, who joined in 2018.

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William Burns is the author of The Invisible Force, a book about modern US diplomacy, the preface to the Russian translation of which can be read here . Last year, he characterized the range of possible relations between "Vladimir Putin's Russia" and the United States as a narrow band between "tough competition and fairly bitter rivalry."