Why is British intelligence telling Putin about the war?

“We think Putin’s advisers are afraid to tell him the truth,” said Jeremy Fleming, director of GCHQ, the acronym for the government’s communications headquarters, one of the three British intelligence services. An astonishing statement from a person in charge of the secret services who did not provide any details to support this. The impression was that this was another part of the psychological war “we know that everything is not going well in the Kremlin.”

This was not an isolated comment. Hours earlier, the U.S. government had released similar information showing coordination between the two countries. “We have information that Putin felt cheated by the Russian military,” said one American, noting that the Russian leader did not know at first that they were sending conscripts to war.

The conclusions are not surprising given that Russia has not achieved a quick victory over Ukraine. Neither Putin’s dominance in the Kremlin nor its key figures is any indication.

Fleming’s comments were intended to recall how Russian President Sergei Naryshkin, head of the SVR Foreign Intelligence Agency, was treated at a meeting aimed at agreeing on the recognition of Ukraine’s self-proclaimed Donbass republics. “Speak clearly,” Putin repeated before Naryshkin had difficulty answering. The Russian leader smiled, which is defined as a certain pleasure of the moment of fear, which was reflected in the face of his subordinate. Naryshkin is seen as a man of power, a strict line of the Kremlin that has known the president since at least the early 1990s.

Some statements are questionable

GCHQ informants are always reluctant to go into details, though they insist that their knowledge Kremlin They are tough. But it is hard not to see the propaganda effect of such statements when they are involved in the speech of a spy chief to cover the media.

Fleming’s speech also contained another unsubstantiated allegation that Russian forces “even accidentally shot down their own planes.” The only possible purpose of this statement, which apparently involved more than one plane, was to clarify to the Kremlin what the West thinks it knows.

Among those who have been in the British government, there is a rift over whether it is appropriate for intelligence officials to make such strong claims. “In my opinion, Fleming should speak only with the data obtained in intelligence work; “If not, you risk misinforming the West,” said a former member of the intelligence service, who asked not to be named.

But, according to Peter Ricketts, a former national security adviser, it is clear that Putin has become “isolated and intolerant of criticism.” Publishing intelligence findings without disclosing sources, he said, continues with what was happening before the conflict.

Shots and misses

It is true that the pre-war predictions of the Western intelligence services turned out to be correct. While most thought the invaders would be more successful, their prediction was that Russia, under Putin’s command, would invade Ukraine and try to achieve a quick victory by besieging Kiev and other major cities.

Now it seems that Fleming’s goal is to impose responsibility for the war on one person. “There is a growing impression that Putin has misjudged the situation,” he said. The comment, again quite obvious, does not look very diplomatic if it learns that any possible ceasefire or peace deal will be needed by the Russian leader.

There is also a danger that the West will rely too much on Russian divisions and difficulties and run the risk of exaggerating its claims. That is what happened before the Iraq war. A former member of the British intelligence service who consulted on the article responds: “It was true that there was an Iraqi unit that could deploy chemical weapons in 45 minutes; But that did not mean what was later said in the British Parliament and what was spread in the media. ”

Translated by Francisco de Zarate