CIA Director William Burns and MI6 Chief Sir Richard Moore made a rare joint appearance at the Financial Times Weekend Festival in London on Sept. 7 to push the “Putin is failing” and “the special relationship is strong” narrative. According to coverage in FT, Burns and Moore spoke about the “unprecedented range of threats to the international world order, from Putin’s war in Ukraine and Russia’s campaign of sabotage operations across Europe to the rise of China and rapid technological change.”
Moore said that Ukraine’s incursion into Russia’s Kursk had “brought the war home to ordinary Russians,” while Burns called it “a significant tactical achievement.” It has “raised questions ... across the Russian elite about where is this all headed,” Burns said. On Russia, both men said there was no sign that Putin’s grip on power had lessened. But it would be wrong to “confuse a tight grip on power with a stable grip.” Both also said it would be wrong to take Putin’s threats of nuclear escalation lightly, but that the West should not be unnecessarily intimidated. “Putin is a bully and is going to continue saber-rattling from time to time,” Burns said.
Burns claimed there was a “genuine risk” that Russia would have used tactical nuclear weapons in the early months of the Ukraine war. “There was a moment in the fall of 2022 when I think there was a genuine risk of a potential use of tactical nuclear weapons,” he said, reported The Telegraph. “The President sent me to talk to our Russian counterpart, Sergei Naryshkin, at the end of 2022 to make very clear what the consequences of that kind of escalation would be, and we’ve continued to be very direct about that. I don’t think we can afford to be intimidated by that saber-rattling or bullying, [but] we’ve got to be mindful of it.”
