Putin in no mood to negotiate, UK spy chief says

“I have seen absolutely no evidence that President Putin has any interest in a negotiated peace short of Ukrainian capitulation," said Richard Moore, during a speech in Turkey. In a veiled message to Trump, who met Putin for a recent summit in Alaska, Moore said attempts to bring the Russian leader to the negotiating table for good faith talks wouldn’t work.

“He is stringing us along," he said of the Russian leader.

Moore said that while Russia was gaining ground in Ukraine on the battlefield, it would fail in its aim of imposing political control over Kyiv and turning the country into a vassal state.

“Russia simply does not have the wherewithal to fully subjugate Ukraine by force. Yes, they are winding forward on the battlefield, but at a snail’s pace and horrendous cost, and Putin’s army is still far short of its original invasion objectives," said Moore. “Bluntly, Putin has bitten off more than he can chew."

The statement came after months in which Trump has sought to bring Moscow and Kyiv together for peace negotiations. The talks sputtered out after Russia intensified drone and missile strikes in Ukraine while handing Ukrainian officials a set of demands that would seize control of much of the country.

Trump again this week bemoaned the fact that Putin hadn’t agreed to halt the fighting, but said he wouldn’t consider further steps to isolate Russia or step up sanctions until European governments stopped any purchases of Russian oil, which he said were helping prop up the regime and its military. “I’m willing to do other things, but not when the people that I’m fighting for are buying oil from Russia," he said during a visit this week to the U.K.

Moore, who is due to step down as MI6 chief, or “C," at the end of this month, said Putin faced a choice of either making a deal to end the fighting or risk an economic and political crisis that threatens his rule. “This is a choice he would have had to confront earlier, if not for the outside help he had been receiving" from North Korea, China and Iran, he said.

Speaking in Istanbul, on Russia’s doorstep on the Black Sea and in a country where many Russians have fled following the full-scale invasion in 2022, Moore also announced a new spy-recruitment initiative aimed at Russia and called Silent Courier, in which potential recruits can contact British intelligence using the dark web.

Turkey has sought to straddle the divide at times between Russia and the West during the war. A member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Turkey has sent weapons to Ukraine while maintaining a robust economic relationship with Russia and attempting to act as a peacemaker.

Moore also spoke about the tumult in the Middle East, where Israel’s offensive against Iran and its proxy groups has rolled back Tehran’s influence and the war in Gaza has reduced much of the enclave to rubble. “We must hope that their humbling by Israel may bring an opportunity for a reset. That requires a change in the mentality of Tehran not yet detected in intelligence."

Write to Jared Malsin at jared.malsin@wsj.com and Max Colchester at Max.Colchester@wsj.com