CIA director Bill Burns is expected to travel to Doha next week to join negotiations on the Gaza hostage and ceasefire deal, two Israeli sources said.

Why it matters: Burns is expected to hold a joint meeting with the Prime Minister of Qatar, the director of the Israeli Mossad and the head of the Egyptian intelligence service in an effort to push forward the deal that could lead to the release of 120 hostages held by Hamas in Gaza and end nine months of war.

The CIA declined to comment.

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is the most famous of the 18 US government agencies that comprise the Intelligence Community (IC) of the United States of America. Unlike the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI), the law strictly prohibits CIA employees or contractors from spying upon or running clandestine operations against American citizens on US soil.

CIA chief Bill Burns is traveling to Doha for an emergency meeting with Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed Al-Thani regarding the ongoing negotiations for a hostage release and temporary truce deal, an official briefed on the talks says.

“Burns is on his way to Doha for an emergency meeting with the Qatari prime minister aimed at exerting maximum pressure on Israel and Hamas to continue negotiating,” the source adds.

Russia has dismissed a report claiming Vladimir Putin did not order the killing of famed dissident Alexei Navalny, who died in an Arctic prison in February.

Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s spokesman, told Russia’s state-run media on Saturday that he had seen the Wall Street Journal report, which cited an assessment by U.S. intelligence agencies, and that there was little reason to believe it. He derided its logic and said it wasn’t worth looking into.

U.S. intelligence agencies signal that Russian President Vladimir Putin may not have planned for Alexei Navalny to have died when he did, a new report said.

The Wall Street Journal report said U.S. agencies have determined that Putin likely didn’t order Navalny to be killed in February, but it doesn’t entirely excuse him from responsibility.

The determination has been shared and agreed upon by officials at the Central Intelligence Agency, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the State Department’s intelligence unit.

US intelligence officials do not think Russian President Vladimir Putin is responsible for the death Alexei Navalny, according to a report slammed by one critic as “absurd.”

Alexei Navalny was found dead in a notorious Arctic penal colony in February, sparking worldwide outrage over the loss of the opposition leader who was widely seen as Putin’s strongest critic.