Prague, Czech Republic
CNN
—
It was a rare moment when the Kremlin in public view matched the reality behind closed doors.
That’s what the head of Britain’s MI6 said, who in a rare speech in Prague, gave the first confirmation from Western intelligence that the private military group Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin was in fact negotiating with the President of Russia Vladimir Putin to end his invasion of Moscow during the failed rebellion on June 24. And he, it seems, was welcomed by the Kremlin to meet with Putin days later.
The MI6 chief, known only as C, also expressed some bewilderment at the tremors around the Kremlin that weekend, and the speed with which loyalties were thrown back and forth.
“If you look at Putin’s behavior that day,” Richard Moore said of June 24. “Prigozhin began, I think, as a traitor at breakfast. He was pardoned at dinner and after a few days, he was invited for tea. So, there were a few things and even the head of MI6 found it a bit difficult to try and decipher, who was in and who was out.
Moore also provided a rare indication of the continued health and whereabouts of Prigozhin himself, whose erratic behavior and frequent audio messages published on Telegram recently ceased. Asked by CNN if Prigozhin was “alive and well,” Moore replied that the Wagner leader was “still floating around,” according to his agency’s understanding.
Western intelligence agencies have declined to comment on the failed rebellion, for fear of providing a false backbone to Russia’s familiar excuse for internal dissension – that it was orchestrated and orchestrated by Western spies. Yet the on-camera speech provided an opportunity for Moore’s expression to convey just how shocking the weakness Putin betrayed over the weekend.
“He never fought against Prigozhin,” Moore said. “He cut a deal to save his skin, using the good offices of the leader of Belarus,” he said, referring to the intervention of Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko that struck the deal. “Even I can’t see inside Putin’s head,” he added. “He must know, I’m sure, that there is something very rotten in the Danish state – to quote Hamlet – and he must cut this deal.”
Moore added that it is difficult to make “firm judgments” about the fate of Wagner itself, as a mercenary group, but they “do not appear to be involved in Ukraine,” and that there “seem to be elements of them in Belarus.”
Moore chose the city of Prague, which he said was the last European capital to roll Russian tanks in front of Ukraine, as the site for a speech. He began with an unusually open appeal to Russians who are “quietly stunned by the sight of their armed forces crushing Ukrainian cities, evicting innocent families from their homes, and kidnapped thousands of children” to spy for the United Kingdom.
“I invite them to do what others have done in the past 18 months and join us. …Their secrets will always be safe with us, and together we will work to end the bloodshed.”
It is an unusual public appeal that fits with the renewed global geopolitics created by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
While Moore maintained that China was “absolutely complicit in the invasion” because of its continued support for the head of the Kremlin, he added that Iran’s support for Russia has caused divisions among its highest officials. “Iran clearly wants to profit as much as possible from this situation,” he said. And while Iran increasingly sells drones that mostly hit civilian targets, he added: “It will sell anything it can and it thinks it can get away.”
