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Ukraine’s Kursk offensive is denting Russia’s war narrative and triggering questions among the Russian elite, leading spy chiefs have said.
Speaking at the Financial Times’ weekend festival in London on Saturday alongside MI6 chief Richard Moore, CIA director Bill Burns said Kursk was “a significant tactical achievement” that boosted Ukrainian morale and exposed Russia’s weaknesses. It “has raised questions across the Russian elite”, he said.
Moore said it was “a typically audacious and bold move by the Ukrainians . . . to try and change the game, and I think they have changed the narrative [and] really brought the war home to Russia”.
It is the first time the two heads have appeared together at a public event in the history of their agencies’ 77-year intelligence sharing partnership. It also represents the latest move by the British and US spy agencies to come out of the shadows to better warn the countries they serve about the mounting dangers that the world faces.
Burns and Moore said an aim of their joint appearance was to underscore the strength of the UK-US relationship at a time of unprecedented global risk.
Political volatility at home, Russia’s war in Ukraine, conflict in the Middle East, the rise of China and rapid technological change all mean that the international world order is “under threat in a way we haven’t seen since the cold war”, the two chiefs wrote in a joint op-ed published in the FT on Saturday.
“Successfully combating this risk is at the very foundation of our special relationship,” they wrote.
They identified China as “the principal intelligence and geopolitical challenge of the 21st century” and said they were “working ceaselessly to achieve a ceasefire in Gaza” and “to disrupt the reckless campaign of sabotage across Europe being waged by Russian intelligence”.
Asked if Russia intelligence was abetting illegal migration across the Mexico border, Burns said: “It’s something we are very sharply focused on. Part of that is a function of so many Russian agents [being] kicked out of Europe. So they are looking for somewhere to go instead.”
When asked whether there was going to be a deal to release Israeli hostages held in Gaza, Burns responded: “This goes to a question of whether or not leaders on both sides are prepared to recognise that enough is enough, and that the time has come for me to make some hard choices. I cannot sit here today with all of you and say that its going to be a success, I also cannot tell you how close we are right now.”
Burns said a deal between Israel and Hamas was “90 per cent” there but “the last 10 per cent” was always the hardest part.
Burns, 68, is a career diplomat now working as a spy, and Moore, 61, is a career intelligence officer who has previously worked as a diplomat. Both are Oxford university graduates who have led parallel professional lives working on Russian, Middle Eastern and Asian affairs.
The closest comparable occasion to Saturday’s joint performance was a news conference given by Ken McCallum, the head of British domestic intelligence MI5, and his US counterpart, Christopher Wray, the head of the FBI, in London in July 2022.