Ever since Russia invaded its neighbor in late February, US and British intelligence services have been extremely willing to divulge their secret intelligence estimates of what is happening on the battlefield – and within the Kremlin. The United States has denied the allegations in a statement issued Friday stating “Similar, baseless allegations concerning Russian President Vladimir Putin have been made more than once. On Thursday, a British spy chief said discouraged Russian troops were refusing to carry out orders and sabotaging their own equipment. Jeremy Fleming, the head of Britain’s electronic intelligence service GCHQ, commented in a public speech that the “pace and scale” at which secret information is released “is truly unprecedented”. Mark Galeotti, a specialist in Russia at University College London, agreed that the public information campaign itself “reflects the fact that we now live in a different era, politically and internationally. And this is a different war. “ Officials say the flow of declassified information – which includes regular updates to journalists in Washington and London and daily updates on Twitter from the British Ministry of Defense – has several purposes. In part, it is to inform Putin that he is being monitored and to make him question what he is being told. It is also designed to encourage the Russian military to tell the truth to Putin and to convey to the Russian public that he was lied to about the war. The United States and Britain have also released intelligence estimates in a bid to thwart Russian actions. This is in line with recent warnings that Russia may be preparing to use chemical weapons in Ukraine. Everything is part of a closely coordinated transatlantic strategy that has been underway for months. Biden government officials say they have decided to aggressively exchange information and coordinate messages with key allies, including Britain, as US concerns about Russian troop movements in the fall of 2021 put the intelligence community on alert. In early November, President Joe Biden sent CIA Director William Burns to Moscow to warn that the United States was fully aware of the movements of Russian troops. The White House is usually closed-minded about the director’s travels, but the Biden government reckoned that in this situation they had to advertise the visit everywhere. The U.S. embassy in Moscow announced that Burns had met with top Kremlin officials shortly after the end of his trip. Shortly after Burns was sent to Moscow, US officials decided they needed to speed up the exchange of information. Officials shared sensitive information with other members of the Five Eyes alliance – Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand – as well as with Ukraine. The director of the National Intelligence Service, Avril Haynes, was sent to Brussels to inform NATO members of information that hides growing US concerns that Russia appeared to be planning an invasion, according to a US official familiar with the matter. condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive issue. Some allies and analysts were skeptical, with memories fading from past intelligence failures, such as the false claim that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction used to justify the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq. Late last year, France and Germany led a group of European countries that seemed to see similar military intelligence to the United States and Britain, but were less convinced that an invasion of Ukraine was imminent. In NATO, Germany initially blocked the use of a system to help Ukraine acquire specific military equipment. France and Germany also prevented NATO from launching an early crisis planning system in response to the build-up before retreating in December. This week, French media reported that the head of France’s military intelligence service, which had failed to anticipate the Russian invasion, had been fired. Eric Vido’s departure comes amid a rift between the French leadership over why it was taken by surprise by the war – something that has been particularly troubling for President Emanuel Macron, who speaks regularly with Putin. Some see Vido as a scapegoat and note that his ouster comes shortly before this month’s French presidential election. In January, as Russia rallied troops near the Ukrainian border, the British Foreign Office issued a statement claiming that Putin wanted to establish a pro-Moscow regime in Ukraine. The United Kingdom has said it is releasing the information due to “exceptional circumstances”. Russia’s invasion on February 24 largely silenced the skeptics and provoked a united response from NATO. The release of US and British secret services is partly designed to support this Western unity, officials and analysts say. Both Biden and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson doubt that Putin is serious about negotiating an end to the war and want to maintain Western military and moral support for Ukraine. The impact on Russia is difficult to measure. A U.S. official who spoke to the Associated Press said the White House hoped that revealing information that Putin was “misinformed” could help the Russian leader reconsider his choices in Ukraine. But publicity could also risk further isolating Putin or doubling his goal of restoring Russian prestige lost since the fall of the Soviet Union. The official said Biden was shaped in part by the belief that “Putin will do what Putin is going to do,” regardless of international efforts to prevent him. Galeotti said Western intelligence services probably did not know how much impact their efforts would have on Putin. “But it’s not bad to try,” he said. “Because when it comes to this, in this kind of highly personalized (government) system, if a line, or a specific concept, happens to cross and stay in Putin’s brain, then that’s a really powerful result.”
Madhani reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Ben Fox and Nomaan Merchant in Washington, Lorne Cook in Brussels and Angela Charlton in Paris contributed to this story.
