Britain’s spy chief says a Russian victory in Ukraine would endanger Western security because President Vladimir Putin wouldn’t stop when his forces reached the border of neighboring countries such as Poland, Romania and Hungary.
Sir Richard Moore, chief of the Secret Intelligence Service, better known as MI6, said the world is the most dangerous it has been in his 37-year intelligence career.
“Our security — British, French, European and trans-Atlantic — will be jeopardized,” he said Friday in a speech at the British Embassy in Paris to mark 120 years of the Entente Cordiale, the agreements that ended centuries of rivalries between France and Britain.
“The cost of supporting Ukraine is well known, but the cost of not doing so would be infinitely higher,” Mr. Moore said. “If Putin succeeds, China would weigh the implications, North Korea would be emboldened, and Iran would become yet more dangerous.”
Since the summer, the U.K. has a new prime minister, France has a new government and the U.S. has elected its next president, he said.
The U.S. has provided almost $65 billion in military assistance to Kyiv since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022. President-elect Donald Trump’s win has stoked fears in Europe that he will pull the plug on further military aid.
“For decades, the U.S.-U.K. intelligence alliance has made our societies safer,” Mr. Moore said. “I worked successfully with the first Trump administration to advance our shared security, and I look forward to doing so again.”
He said the collective strength of allies on both sides of the Atlantic will “outmatch and outlast Putin’s morally bankrupt axis of aggression.”
“Our alliance has strength in numbers, both economic and military, and our unity of purpose makes that count,” he said. “Putin, by contrast, is jeopardizing Russia’s future, pouring vast sums into his military machine and squandering tens of thousands of lives — Russian and now North Korean — in his catastrophic conflict.”
In his view, Moscow’s insatiable need for military weapons such as artillery and drones, along with fresh recruits it can send to the front lines, has made it into little more than a client state to Tehran, Beijing and Pyongyang.
“I do not doubt the transactional consequences of that arrangement and the succor it brings to Russia,” Mr. Moore said. “But it is a transaction: there is no real trust or respect [and] its roots are shallow. There are limits to the partnership.”