GCHQ Director Jeremy Fleming delivers a speech at Watergate House on February 14, 2019 in London, England. (Photo by Hannah McKay – WPA Pool/Getty Images)
SYDNEY: In a rare public appearance, the head of Britain’s GCHQ — their equivalent of America’s National Security Agency — said this morning that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is marked by demoralized Russian troops who are making fundamental mistakes.
Put simply, Sir Jeremy Fleming, director of GCHQ, said, “it increasingly looks like Putin has massively misjudged the situation. It’s clear he misjudged the resistance of the Ukrainian people. He underestimated the strength of the coalition his actions would galvanize. He under-played the economic consequences of the sanctions regime. He over-estimated the abilities of his military to secure a rapid victory.”
Fleming later added that “We’ve seen Russian soldiers — short of weapons and morale — refusing to carry out orders, sabotaging their own equipment and even accidentally shooting down their own aircraft.”
In the shorter term, Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has done the opposite of what Putin ostensibly hoped to achieve, Fleming said in his speech at Canberra’s Australian National University. “The great irony is, of course, that through his actions, Putin has brought upon himself exactly what he was trying to avoid – a Ukraine with a renewed sense of nationhood, a NATO that is more united than ever, and a global coalition of nations that condemn his actions.”
The director of the massive but highly secretive GCHQ, who was here in part to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the Australian Signals Directorate, praised Australia for beefing up its defense budget in the face of the new array of threats and the changing international picture.
The government of Prime Minister Scott Morrison has made much of its success in boosting Australia’s defense spending to 2 percent of GDP and has touted spending and jobs at half-a-dozen events hosted by the prime minister or his defense minister. In terms of cyber, Australia announced Tuesday that it would increase spending on cyber by almost $10 billion over the next decade, with $500 million to start in 2023.
More broadly, Fleming said the “pandemic, the profile and dominance of technology and cyber, the role of China, the end of the Afghan campaign and now Putin’s invasion of Ukraine” are all part of a “generational upheaval” across the globe.
A key to dealing with that new system is new uses of intelligence. Fleming pointed to Britain’s new Government Information Cell, created to identify and counter Kremlin disinformation.
“It is already a remarkable feature of this conflict just how much intelligence has been so quickly declassified to get ahead of Putin’s actions,” Fleming said. “From the warnings of the war, to the intelligence on false flag operations designed to provide a fake premise to the invasion. And more recently, to the Russian plans to falsely claim Ukrainian use of banned chemical weapons.
“On this and many other subjects, deeply secret intelligence is being released to make sure the truth is heard. At this pace and scale, it really is unprecedented,” he added. “In my view, intelligence is only worth collecting if we use it, so I unreservedly welcome this development.”
Given his Australian audience, Fleming really had to mention China and its relationship with Russia, both of which are Pacific powers. China and Russia have gown increasingly close, cooperating on massive military exercises, and signing trade agreements.
He argued there are risks to both countries in “being too closely aligned. Russia understands that long term, China will become increasingly strong militarily and economically. Some of their interests conflict; Russia could be squeezed out of the equation.”
One point of friction, Fleming believes, is that China wants to supplant the West and set the norms for a new global order, and would not be “well served by close alliance with a regime that willfully and illegally ignores them all” as Russia has done in invading Ukraine, a sovereign state, and threatening the use of nuclear weapons if it doesn’t get its way.
On the area closest to his day-to-day work, Fleming offered some insights on the apparent lack of cyber attacks from Russia that many had predicted.
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“Whilst some people look for cyber ‘Pearl Harbors,’ it was never our understanding that a catastrophic cyber-attack was central to Russian’s use of offensive cyber or to their military doctrine. To think otherwise misjudges how cyber has an effect in military campaigns,” he said.
However, Fleming did note that GCHQ has “seen sustained intent from Russia to disrupt Ukrainian government and military systems. We’ve seen what looks like some spill-over of activity affecting surrounding countries. And we’ve certainly seen indications which suggests Russia’s cyber actors are looking for targets in the countries that oppose their actions.”
All in all, Fleming emphasized, Putin’s actions in Ukraine have triggered reactions that are the opposite of what the Russian leader had hoped to accomplish.
Russia’s aggression “has certainly galvanized NATO. The war has triggered an unprecedented international response – 141 countries condemned it at the UN General Assembly. All over Europe countries are overturning decades long approaches to their defense policy; investing more too. And further afield, including in this region, countries like Australia and Japan are leaning in. It’s also showing, in stark relief, those countries that choose to either support Putin or abstain from making a choice.
“And those choices will affect the global order and our national securities for decades to come,” Fleming said.
