WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Intelligence suggesting Russia paid bounties to the Taliban has not been corroborated and there is no evidence that any payments led to deaths of service members, the Pentagon’s top civilian and military leaders told Congress on Thursday.
“That is a unique, discrete piece of information that is not corroborated,” Army General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the House of Representatives Armed Services Committee, in comments echoed at the hearing by Defense Secretary Mark Esper.
President Donald Trump, a Republican who has worked to cultivate warmer relations with Moscow, has downplayed the significance of the intelligence and denied being briefed on the matter before it was reported by news outlets last month.
(Reporting by Phil Stewart and Idrees Ali; Editing by Leslie Adler)
