CIA Director Burns on how intel has helped Ukraine's defense against Russia

You've got the whole world to watch right now. So I know you're a busy man. I want to start on Ukraine and Russia with this anniversary. On the cusp of Russia's invasion, you flew to Kiev, and you told President Zelensky, tell me if this is right, the Russians are coming to kill you. Was that the very first thing you said? Wasn't the very first thing I said to President Zelensky, but President Biden had asked me to go to Kiev to lay out for President Zelensky the most recent intelligence we had, which suggested that what Vladimir Putin was planning was what he thought would be a lightning strike from the Belarus border to seize Kiev in a matter of a few days, and also to seize an airport just northwest of Kiev called Gustavau, which he wanted to use as a platform to bring in airborne troops as a way, again, of accelerating that lightning conquest of Kiev. And I think President Zelensky understood what was at stake and what he was up against. Our Ukrainian intelligence partners also had good intelligence about what was coming as well.

But I do think that the role of intelligence in this instance, what we're able to provide to President Zelensky, not just on that trip, but throughout the course of the war, have helped him to defend his country with such courage and tenacity. And I think that made a contribution early, just before the war started. Being able to share that intelligence. Yes. You also have said and tell me if this is correct, that it was only a group of about three or four people around Vladimir Putin who knew that he was actually planning this invasion. No, I think that's true. I mean, I had watched over the years, especially over recent years, as Putin had narrowed his circle of advisors.

And it was a circle in which he prized loyalty over competence. He was a group of people who tended to tell him what he wanted to hear, or at least had learned over the years that it wasn't career in his life. It wasn't career enhancing to question his judgments as well. And so that was one of the deepest flaws, I think, in Russian decision making just before the war, as it was such a closed circle of people, enforcing one another's profoundly mistaken assumptions.

Face the Nation, CBS News, video, Margaret Brennan, U.S., politics