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

MOSCOW, Dec 22 (Reuters) - 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.

"This is absolutely not true," Peskov said of the intelligence conclusions.

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.

Moscow sees the eastward enlargement of the NATO military alliance, which now includes states in eastern Europe that were part of the Soviet bloc after World War Two, as a threat to Russia.

Putin has said he does not seek to restore the Soviet Union or to attack a NATO member. He said this month that Russia did not want a war with Europe but that if Europe started one, then Russia would be victorious.

(Reporting by Dmitry Antonov; editing by Guy Faulconbridge and Timothy Heritage)