It was an extraordinarily public recruitment drive from an MI6 chief - an open invitation to senior officials in Russia’s security establishment to join those who have defected in disgust over Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
Sir Richard Moore wanted to send a direct message to officials and politicians in Moscow : “You know the address – come and talk to us… Our door is always open… Our loyalty to our agents is lifelong… our gratitude eternal… Their secrets will always be safe with us.”
This was only the second public address by Sir Richard since he had taken over as ‘C’, and there was a reason why he chose Prague to raise this theme. It was crushing of the Prague Spring by Russian tanks 55 years ago which had led to a wave of Soviet officials crossing over to the West.
There have been other defections since then. But security officers point out, these have been motivated, to a large extent, by other factors such as money, or general unhappiness, or clashes with colleagues.
But the Ukraine war has seen a return to Russian officials agreeing to help Western services in numbers which one officer described as “ surprising but very, very welcome”.
Sir Richard, speaking at the British embassy, said “Many Russians are wrestling with the same dilemmas and the same tugs of conscience as their predecessors did in 1968.
“I invite them to do what others have already done this past 18 monthsand join hands with us. We will handle their offers of help with the discretion and professionalism for which our service is famed.”
People in the Kremlin hierarchy have seen Putin’s position become progressively weak, Sir Richard wanted to point out. The fact that Yevgeny Prigozhin is still free and moving around despite marching on Moscow to carry out a coup was an astonishing example of this.
“Just remember, in the morning of the coup Prigozhin was a traitor. By the evening he had been pardoned, two days later he was having tea with Putin”, said the head of MI6.”
A security official added later: “And of course it was not tea with polonium which is something enemies of President Putin could have expected in the past, but now Putin is in no position to do that.”
Ukrainian military and intelligence officials have claimed that they have received information from the Kremlin via Western intelligence services enabling them to carry out attacks inside Russia.
Sir Richard would not be drawn on what role his or other British services may have played in this. He wanted to stress, however, that many in Moscow’s security apparatus shared Prigozhin’s scathing assessment of what had unfolded in Ukraine.
“One architect of that onslaught, Yevgeny Prigozhin, demolished the whole charade in a single sentence when he said, and I quote Prigozhin’s own words. ‘The war was needed for Shoigu to receive a hero star….The oligarchic clan that rules Russia needed the war. The mentally ill scumbags decided: ‘it’s OK, we’ll throw in a few thousand more Russian men as cannon fodder. They’ll die under artillery fire, but we’ll get what we want.”’
The fact remains, however, that Putin’s Russia has global allies helping in Ukraine. Moore said “Some nations have reduced themselves to being accomplices of the aggressor. Iran’s decision to supply Russia with the suicide drones that mete out random destruction to Ukraine’s cities has provoked internal quarrels at the highest level of the regime in Tehran. And so it should, because that decision was unconscionable. Iran seeks cash by selling arms to Russia to enable them to kill Ukrainian civilians.”
Wagner is no longer active in Ukraine, but its widespread and lucrative operations in Africa have continued. The regimes dealing with them in the continent will, in the long run, suffer, Sir Richard held.
Russia is “hawking mercenaries around Africa”, and in nations suffering from civil war, poverty and collapsed infrastructure, Moscow is “offering a 21st Century version of a Faustian pact.”
But the regimes which welcomed Wagner are at risk. “Now they’ve had to watch the very mercenaries who they are supposed to trust with their livesturning against their ultimate patron, Vladimir Putin, and bearing down on Moscow. If Russian mercenaries can betray Putin, who else might they betray?”
Russia has sought ever closer ties with China as international sanctions have begun to bite. But that has come at a cost, China is emerging as the senior partner in the relationship.
Sir Richard ended on his theme of redemption of Russians by rejecting Vladimir Putin and his war of aggression. “ They are watching in horror as their soldiers ravage a kindred country. They know in their hearts that Putin’s case for attacking a fellow Slavic nation is fraudulent, a miasma of lies and fantasy. The message to them is “ our door is always open.”
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