Jeremy Fleming, head of the UK’s cyber and security agency GCHQ, believes Russia has massively misjudged the situation in Ukraine and some of President Vladimir Putins advisers are not telling him the truth, the BBC reported.
Fleming has given a rare speech during a visit to Australia in which he said that Russian soldiers, short of weapons and morale – had refused to carry out orders, sabotaged their own equipment and even accidentally shot down their own aircraft.
Putin’s advisers are afraid to tell him the truth, he said, but what’s going on and the extent of these misjudgments must be crystal clear to the regime.
“It all adds up to the strategic miscalculation that Western leaders warned Putin about. It’s become his personal war, with the cost being paid by innocent people in Ukraine and, increasingly, by ordinary Russians too.”
He had also said there were risks for China in being too closely aligned with Russia, the BBC reported.
Beijing’s aspirations to become a leading player on the global stage would not be served by being associated with a regime in Moscow that had willfully and illegally ignored global rules, he said.
