Russian President Vladimir Putin has shown “absolutely no evidence” of wanting peace in Ukraine, Britain’s spy chief said Friday, warning that the Kremlin leader is bent on imposing his will by force.
In a farewell speech at the British Consulate in Istanbul, Sir Richard Moore, the outgoing head of MI6, accused Putin of “stringing us along” with false signals of negotiation.
“He seeks to impose his imperial will by all means at his disposal. But he cannot succeed,” Moore said. “Bluntly, Putin has bitten off more than he can chew. He thought he was going to win an easy victory, but he – and many others – underestimated the Ukrainians.”
Moore, who steps down at the end of September after five years as chief of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, has overseen MI6 during one of Europe’s most turbulent security crises in decades. Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 has killed tens of thousands and continues to rage, largely in the country’s east.
Moore said the invasion had strengthened Ukrainian national identity and accelerated its westward trajectory, while also pushing Sweden and Finland to join NATO.
“Putin has sought to convince the world that Russian victory is inevitable. But he lies. He lies to the world. He lies to his people. Perhaps he even lies to himself,” Moore told a news conference.
He said Putin was “mortgaging his country’s future for his own personal legacy and a distorted version of history,” and that the war was “accelerating this decline.”
Moore, who previously served as Britain’s ambassador to Ankara, the Turkish capital, added that “greater powers than Russia have failed to subjugate weaker powers than Ukraine.”
Analysts say Putin believes he can outlast the political commitment of Ukraine’s Western partners and win a protracted war of attrition by wearing down Ukraine’s smaller army with sheer weight of numbers.
Ukraine, meanwhile, is racing to expand its defense cooperation with other countries and secure billions of dollars in investment for its domestic weapons industry.
