Putin Has Been Humiliated, Put Under Pressure, U.K. Spy Chief Says

PRAGUE—The head of the U.K.’s Secret Intelligence Service said Russian President Vladimir Putin is under pressure as fissures in his inner circle appear and his forces have little chance of regaining momentum in Ukraine. 

In a rare public speech, Richard Moore, who heads the spy agency known as MI6, said Putin’s offer of clemency to Yevgeny Prigozhin after the mercenary leader’s march on Moscow was “humiliating” for the Russian leader. Prigozhin appears to still be at large and there are “deep fractures” in the elite circle around Putin, Moore said. Wagner’s operations in Africa appear still to be functioning but the group is no longer active in Ukraine, he said.  

The British intelligence chief said he remained hopeful that Ukraine can gain the upper hand as “there appears now to be little prospect of the Russian forces regaining momentum.” In the past month, Ukraine has recovered more territory than Russia captured in the past year, Moore said, urging Western allies to arm Ukraine for as long as it takes. Ukraine’s counteroffensive is progressing slowly in an attempt to keep losses down, he said.

Moore, who like his predecessors is referred to by the initial “C” and has headed MI6 since 2020, made a public call for Russians to spy on the Kremlin to avoid being on the “wrong side of history.”

“I invite them to do what others have already done this past 18 months and join hands with us,” he said. “Our door is always open.” 

The spy chief criticized countries backing Russia. He singled out Iran for selling weapons to Russia for cash. He also called out African dictatorships that pay Russian mercenaries. He asked if the mercenaries could be trusted. “If Russian mercenaries can betray Putin, who else might they betray?” Moore said. “If they advance on Moscow, what other capitals might they threaten?” 

China remains the main priority for MI6 and the agency devotes more resources to that country than anywhere else, Moore said. In particular, the spy agency is worried about China’s ability to collect vast amounts of data from around the globe to build highly advanced machine-learning tools and artificial intelligence. “China benefits from sheer scale,” he said, adding that it had, for example, forced countries to hand over health data in return for accessing Chinese-made Covid-19 vaccines. 

China’s diplomatic ties with Moscow remain firm, Moore said, but the relationship is becoming increasingly lopsided, with the Russian government more subservient to Beijing as the war progresses.

The reason behind Putin’s decision to cut a deal with Prigozhin to allow him to flee with his life to Belarus was one “even the chief of MI6 finds a bit difficult to interpret,” said Moore. That deal with Prighozin still holds, he said. Putin’s grip on power remains and there doesn’t appear to be any threat to it, but “he has to realize that something is pretty rotten” within the Russian system, he said.

Moore said spy agencies won’t be displaced by artificial intelligence, arguing that humans can still shape and access information in a way that technology cannot. In particular, spies can “influence decisions inside a government or terrorist group,” he said. “There will always be an extraordinary bond that allows one human to confide in another,” he said. MI6’s role in the future will be to try to uncover people who want to use AI irresponsibly. 

The decision by “C” to give a public address and take questions from reporters is a new development in itself. Until 1992, the U.K. government formally didn’t recognize that MI6 existed and public utterances by its chiefs were kept to an absolute minimum.

Now MI6, recognizing that it wants to recruit a more diverse and younger group of operatives, is trying to build a more public profile.

Britain, along with the U.S., was also vocal in the lead-up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine about the threat that Putin presented and that war was likely. 

“I don’t think you need all the resources within MI6 to conclude there are deep fractures within the Russia elite around Putin,” Moore said.

Write to Max Colchester at [email protected]