UK’s Top Spy Claims Russia ‘Running Out of Steam in Ukraine’, Calls China Top Threat

Appointed by Boris Johnson in 2020, Secret Intelligence Service chief Richard Moore has made a name for himself as the first MI6 director to use Twitter and post hip, youth-friendly memes. Last year, he got in a spat with Moscow after simultaneously claiming Russia was a “declining power” and putting it at the top of his list of global "threats."

President Putin has suffered an “epic fail” in Ukraine and Russia’s military operation is “about to run out of steam,” MI6 chief Richard Moore has claimed.

“He has obviously made, and the Russian forces have made, some incremental progress over recent weeks and months, but it is tiny amounts. We are talking about a small number of miles of advance,” Moore said in a wide-ranging discussion about the UK and the West’s global enemies at the Aspen Security Forum in Aspen, Colorado on Thursday.

“Our assessment is the Russians will increasingly find it difficult to find manpower, materiel over the next few weeks. They will have to pause in some way, and that will give the Ukrainians opportunities to strike back,” Moore added, characterizing the conflict as a “winnable campaign” for Kiev.

“Their morale is still high. They are starting to receive increasing amounts of good weaponry,” the spy chief assured.

Earlier this month, President Vladimir Putin blasted calls by Western officials and media pushing Kiev further into a suicidal conflict with Moscow, and assured that Russia hasn’t even gotten started with its demilitarization and denazification campaign.

“We hear today that someone wants to defeat us on the battlefield. Well, what can I say? Let them try. We have already heard that the West wants to fight us ‘to the last Ukrainian’. This is a tragedy for the Ukrainian people,” Putin said.

“Everyone should be aware that we, by and large, haven’t even started anything. At the same time, we do not reject peace talks, but those who do must understand that the longer [the conflict drags on], the more difficult it will be for them to come to an agreement with us,” Putin added.

China ‘Threat’

Moore also commented on the Chinese “threat” to the UK and the West, suggesting that Beijing far outweighs Moscow.

“It feels pretty tight but it’s not an equal partnership and Ukraine has made it less equal. Moscow is very much the junior partner and the Chinese are very much in the driving seat,” the British spook said. “It is too early to tell what lessons they [China] will draw from Putin’s misadventures in Ukraine,” but “Xi Jinping is watching this like a hawk,” Moore added.

Moore characterized China as a “clear threat” to the West, not only geopolitically or militarily, but in terms of “what the Chinese are trying to do to our societies.” He assured however that China doesn’t have “friends” and “allies” like Britain does with the Five Eyes – an intelligence sharing bloc consisting of the UK, the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

Saying he didn’t think a conflagration between China and the West over Taiwan was at all “inevitable,” Moore suggested that there is a “desire of all of us to see the differences between the peoples on either side of the Taiwan Strait settled through peaceful means.”

Iran Nuclear Deal Dead

Turning to Iran, Moore said he was “skeptical” about the prospects of restoring the Iran nuclear agreement, and that he found it unlikely that Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei would “go for the deal.”

“It is probably the best means still available to constrain the Iranian nuclear program. I’m not convinced we’re gonna get there,” he said.

Moore did not elaborate on why Khamenei, who signed off on the original nuclear deal in 2015, wouldn’t back it today.

The MI6 chief’s arguments about Iran's supposed nuclear ambitions are also up for debate. On Wednesday, CIA director William Burns told Aspen Security Forum attendees that contrary to claims made in Washington by both the Trump and Biden administrations, Iran never resumed its alleged nuclear weapons program since the mid-2000s, despite the CIA and the US intelligence community as a whole keeping a “very, very sharp focus” on the matter.