From behind the Torygraph pay wall..
For those (understandably) squeamish about visiting such places .
" MI6 chief believes Vladimir Putin's war in Ukraine could be 'unwinnable'
Richard Moore says 'fascinating' theory that Russia cannot secure a wider political victory makes 'sense'
By
Steve Bird
26 February 2022 • 3:52pm
A Ukrainian soldier walks past the debris of a burning military truck in Kyiv
The head of MI6 has revealed he believes Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine will probably be “unwinnable” because the Russian president will never secure a wider political victory.
Richard Moore, the chief of the UK Secret Intelligence Service, wrote how a report by a leading professor was “fascinating” after it suggested the Russian president will fail in Ukraine because he underestimated its military might and its people’s determination to defend their country.
In a comment posted on his Twitter account, Moore, 58, said the article published by Prof Sir Lawrence Freedman, the Emeritus Professor of War Studies at King’s College London, which claimed Putin was “prone to outrageous theories” and an “unhinged rant”, made perfectly good “sense”.
The paper, called A Reckless Gamble, concludes that “whatever the military victories to come, this will be an extraordinarily difficult war for Putin to win politically”.
The professor points out how, despite their military “superiority ... and potentially overwhelming numbers [of troops]”, Russian forces “made less progress than might have been expected on the first day”, even though they had the advantage of “tactical surprise”.
“Yet it is still reasonable to ask if Vladimir Putin has launched an unwinnable war,” Sir Lawrence wrote on the website Substack.
Posting a link to the article, Moore, the foreign spy chief, wrote: “Fascinating. Makes sense to me.”
The intelligence service boss, who has more than 133,000 followers on the social media platform, stresses on his profile that “retweets show my interest was piqued, nothing more.”
It is unusual for the MI6 chief to comment so openly about speculation regarding international and diplomatically sensitive affairs.
Around the same time, he posted a comment praising this year’s LGBT History Month, adding: “With the tragedy and destruction unfolding so distressingly in Ukraine, we should remember the values and hard-won freedoms that distinguish us from Putin, none more than LGBT+ rights.”
He included an account of one of his intelligence operatives who told of their delight after discovering an “LGBT+ network group” shortly after joining MI6 which offered support and reassurance.
Earlier this week, Moore, known in Whitehall as C, took to Twitter to boast how his spies, along with their American counterparts, scored a considerable intelligence victory over Russia after uncovering Putin’s plans to order an attack on Ukraine.
'Unprovoked cruel aggression'
Moore wrote: “US and UK intelligence communities uncovered Putin’s plans for Ukraine.
“We exposed his attempts to engineer ‘false flag’, fake attacks to justify his invasion. This attack was long-planned, unprovoked, cruel aggression.”
Russia had dismissed the West's claims as anti-Russian hysteria and disinformation.
Although, perhaps inevitably, Moore failed to give any indication of where or how the intelligence was gleaned.
But, this latest approval of the professor’s paper offers a tantalising insight into what Moore thinks of Putin.
The professor wrote how Ukraine’s “spirited resistance” meant “we have been reminded that the morale and determination of those defending their country tends to be higher than that of those mounting an invasion, especially if they are unsure why they are doing so.”
He said Putin’s “less than sure-footed start to his campaign”, in part owing to an army with “limited” experience of large-scale ground operations, meant Russia would have to treat Ukraine with “more respect” and respond more methodically.
The professor concludes: “At times in democracies we lament the flabbiness, incoherence, short-sightedness and inertia of our decision-making, compared with autocrats who can outsmart us by thinking long-term and then taking bold steps without any need to convince a sceptical public, listen to critics, or be held back by such awkward constraints as the rule of law.
“Putin reminds us that autocracy can lead to great errors, and while democracy by no means precludes us [from] making our own mistakes, it at least allows us opportunities to move swiftly to new leaders and new policies when that happens. Would that this now happens in Russia.”
... The bolded bit is a good retort to all those 'Lozza Fox' sorts who seem to be trying to suggest that a progressive, and robust upholding of minority rights is a sign of weakness.
