Britain’s top spy has appealed to potential Russian defectors increasingly dismayed at Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine amid growing questions over the tightness of his grip on power.
In only his second public speech since taking over as head of the Secret Intelligence Service, Sir Richard Moore travelled to Prague to deliver a targeted message to those inside Russia’s political, military, economic and security systems.
“Many Russians are wrestling with the same dilemmas and the same tugs of conscience as their predecessors did in 1968,” he said, referring to how the crushing of the Prague Spring 55 years ago was a “breaking point” for some Russians who turned to the West.
Sir Richard, right, added: “I invite them to do what others have already done this past 18 months and join hands with us. Our door is always open.”
The spy chief, known as C, was seeking to seize the moment when some Russians, horrified by the war in Ukraine, appalled by the military tactics costing so many tens of thousands of lives and maybe now growing increasingly disillusioned with Putin’s regime, may decide to take a brave step to try to end the bloodshed.
Sir Richard wanted these individuals, likely to be agonizing over such decisions, to hear that they would be looked after and protected. He said: “We will handle their offers of help with the discretion and professionalism for which our service is famed. Their secrets will always be safe with us, and together we will work to bring the bloodshed to an end.”
It was no coincidence that he had chosen the Czech capital, after the Prague Spring had so challenged the Soviet authorities before the liberalising reforms of Czechoslovak communist leader Alexander Dubcek were crushed by a huge invasion force including some 2,000 tanks rolling into the country.
Speaking in the British ambassador Matt Field’s residence in Thun Palace, Sir Richard was brutal in his criticism of the “bleak, pitiless mentality of conquest and domination that drives Vladimir Putin”.
He also stressed that Ukrainian forces in their summer counter-offensive, even if gains were limited and slow as commanders seek to preserve their soldiers’ lives, had recaptured more land in a month than Russian troops had seized in a year.
He added: “There appears to be little prospect of the Russian forces regaining momentum.”
The June revolt by Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin may have failed, but it is widely believed to have weakened Putin who is now thought to have axed several senior commanders with deep doubts about how he is waging his war launched in February 2022.
At the start of this month, CIA director Williams Burns said: “That disaffection creates a once-in-a-generation opportunity for us at the CIA — at our core a human intelligence service. We’re not letting it go to waste.”
However, Western intelligence agencies will want to reassure potential defectors that they will be safe after the Novichok poisoning of former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury in March 2018, which killed local woman Dawn Burgess after she was exposed to the military grade nerve agent suspected to have been used by Russian military intelligence officers.
Sir Richard also told how the shockingly high casualty figures on the battlefield were “bleeding back” into Russia in a potentially distabilising way.
He criticised countries such as Iran for arming Putin’s military with drones and other equipment, fuelling the conflict.
He told of “internal quarrels at the highest level of the regime in Tehran” over the backing for Putin.
MI6 was devoting more resources on China than any other country, he added, warning of “data traps” being set to snare people to hand over their personal information to foreign states.
