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A Russian victory in Ukraine would “embolden” Moscow’s allies and endanger US security, British spy chief Richard Moore said, calling for enduring support for Kyiv as Donald Trump prepares to take office.
“If Putin is allowed to succeed in reducing Ukraine to a vassal state, he will not stop there,” Moore said in Paris on Friday. “Our security — British, French, European and transatlantic — would be jeopardised.”
Moore, who heads the UK foreign intelligence service MI6, said his agency and its French counterpart DGSE were working to prevent a dangerous escalation by “calibrating the risk” of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “mix of bluster and aggression”.
He stressed the importance of continued western support to Kyiv, although Trump has said that he would end the war in 24 hours — comments that suggested the US president-elect might press Kyiv to agree a deal favourable to Moscow.
“The cost of supporting Ukraine is well known, but the cost of not doing so would be infinitely higher,” Moore warned. “China would weigh the implications, North Korea would be emboldened, and Iran would become still more dangerous.”
Moore, who appeared alongside his French counterpart Nicolas Lerner, was speaking at an event to mark the 120th anniversary of the entente cordiale, a military and diplomatic agreement that bound the two countries as allies.
Lerner said the war in Ukraine had “put the collective security of the whole of Europe . . . at stake” but that events in the Indo-Pacific could put “the future of the world at stake”.
Many European officials fear that Trump’s “America First” agenda could jeopardise transatlantic relations, and have been alarmed by some of Trump’s nominees for top security and defence posts.
One is Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s candidate to be director of national intelligence, who has at times seemingly repeated Russian propaganda points. She has falsely cited as an “undeniable fact” that there were US-funded biolabs in Ukraine that could “release and spread deadly pathogens”.
But Moore said the US and UK alliance had “for decades . . . made our societies safer”. He added: “I worked successfully with the first Trump administration . . . and look forward to doing so again.”
The rare joint appearance by the two intelligence chiefs is the most recent example of western spies coming out of the shadows to highlight what they say are growing threats to the international order.
In September, Moore and CIA chief Bill Burns made an unprecedented public appearance in London. Similarly, Ken McCallum, head of British domestic intelligence service MI5, spoke at a joint event in London with Christopher Wray, head of the FBI, two years ago.
At the Paris event, Moore said that during his “37 years in the intelligence profession, I’ve never seen the world in a more dangerous state”.
As well as the war in Ukraine, Moore warned about the conflict in the Middle East, saying that “we have yet to have a full reckoning with the radicalising impact of the fighting and terrible loss of innocent life . . . after the horrors of [Hamas’s] October 7” attack on Israel last year.