Vladimir Putin is “under pressure” at home following an aborted mutiny by warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin that resulted in the Russian president having to cut a “humiliating” deal to “save his skin,” the head of Britain’s MI6 intelligence service told POLITICO.

Richard Moore said that Prigozhin’s uprising was indicative of “deep fractures” within the Russian elite and that Putin had to realize something was “deeply rotten” in his country, even if he could not speak to the Russian leader’s current mental state.

The spy chief, who was speaking at a POLITICO event hosted by the British embassy in Prague, also appealed to Russian citizens who are disillusioned by the leadership to get in touch with the British security service.

“Prigozhin started off as a traitor at breakfast. He had been pardoned by supper and then a few days later he was invited for tea,” said Moore, who became chief of the secretive agency in 2020 following a career in diplomacy. 

He added: “I don’t think it needs all the resources of MI6 to conclude that there are deep fractures within the Russian elite around Putin. If you have an invading army coming up the road at you, that indicates there has been a falling out.”

“The extraordinary thing was to see the way that Putin handled that, and the weakness that that demonstrated,” he went on to say. 

One month after Prigozhin, Putin’s one-time caterer, led a mutinous convoy to within some 200 kilometers of Moscow before cutting a deal and turning around, Moore said the warlord was “floating around” the area, his deal with Putin still “holding as far as we can tell.”

That said, the spy chief underscored that the Russian defense officials targeted by Prigozhin were “still there” and that there were “clearly issues.”

“They’re [the Russian defense ministry bosses] still the source of the same disaffection that they were before,” said Moore.

Moore brushed away the suggestion that Western intelligence played a role in the mutiny, saying it was “very flattering that President Putin thinks my service is behind this.” He also said the dizzying sequence of events before, during and after the mutiny by the Wagner mercenary army was a “little bit difficult to try and interpret” even for the head of Britain’s spy service.

But he did say that Putin had been shown to be “under pressure” on his home turf as the carnage in Ukraine was “bleeding back onto the body politic” in Russia.

“He has to realize, I’m sure, that something is deeply rotten in the state of Denmark, to quote Hamlet, around him and he had to cut this deal, and it was pretty humiliating. He had to go and cut a deal through [Belarusian President Alexander] Lukashenko to save his skin on that day.”

Marmite cufflinks

Speaking on the 55th anniversary of the Prague Spring uprising, during which a student-led movement revolted against the Czech Republic’s Russian occupiers, Moore drew a parallel with current times. Once again, he said, Russian tanks had rolled into a European country.

While Russia’s crackdown in 1968 had led to 20 more years of iron rule by Moscow, in this case Ukraine was mounting a powerful fightback against the invader, he said. 

Moore called Kyiv’s counteroffensive a “hard grind,” noting that Russia had been able to put in a formidable array of defenses and that Ukrainian commanders were proceeding with caution due to a desire to preserve their troops’ lives. Even so, “they [Ukraine] have still been able to recover more territory than the Russians managed to achieve in a year.”

He added: “So I remain optimistic about it. I think the resolve to support the Ukrainians is as strong as it ever was.”

Asked about a possible endgame to the war in Ukraine, he said: “Most conflicts end in some kind of negotiation. It is for Ukraine to define the terms of peace, not us. Our job is to try to put them in the strongest possible position to negotiate from a position of strength.”

He added that “no one wants to humiliate Putin, still less does anyone want to humiliate the great nation of Russia. But the route for them is very clear: Pull all your troops out … It is for Ukraine to define the terms of peace, not us.”

Moore’s comments were part of rare public outreach by MI6. Founded under a different name in 1909, its existence was only officially acknowledged by the British government in 1994. During that time, a rich lore has developed around the spy agency, with writers from Graham Greene to John Le Carré mythologizing the agency, culminating with Ian Fleming’s James Bond 007 character.

Moore — who is known as “C” within the agency — winks at some of this legend, for example by using a green pen, in keeping with a century-old tradition. On Wednesday, he added a new flourish to the tradition by showing his Marmite jar-shaped cufflinks.

Emblazoned over each jar were the words “love” and “hate.”