Jeremy Fleming, director of the British Government Communications Authority (AFP)
Britain’s largest electronic intelligence service said on Tuesday that Britain expects to see indications if Russia begins to consider publishing… its nuclear arsenal In its war with Ukraine, he reiterated that any talk of the use of such weapons is “extremely dangerous.”
More than seven months into the war, the head of Britain’s Government Communications Authority, Jeremy Fleming, told BBC radio that Russia was running short of ammunition, friends and troops.
Fleming said that the Russian president Vladimir Putin So far, it has adhered to long-standing military doctrine not to use nuclear weapons, but the agency will look for indications that this may change.
“I hope we will see indications if they start to abandon this path,” he added, without clarifying the possible nature of these indications.
“But let’s be really clear about it, if they were thinking about it, it would be a disaster in the way a lot of people have talked about it,” he said.
Fleming also said he was sure Putin was concerned about the dangers of escalation, and that that could be a sign of why “these other forms of war are not used”.
“I would hope that we will see indicators if they started to go down that path”
Sir Jeremy Fleming, head of intelligence agency GCHQ, on whether the UK would know if Russia was planning to use nuclear weaponshttps://t.co/biIxVcEoyt | #R4Today pic.twitter.com/QkD1LA3Tv9
— BBC Radio 4 Today (@BBCr4today) October 11, 2022
In a speech later on Tuesday, Fleming will also say that the Russians are beginning to understand Moscow’s desperate situation over the conflict.
According to quotes from his speech, he will say: “They only see now how badly Putin has judged the situation.”
As he says in the letter: “They (the Russians) are fleeing conscription, realizing that they can no longer travel. They know that their use of modern technologies…will be greatly restricted. And they feel the terrible human loss of his war of choice.”
(Archyde.com)