Secret intelligence has unusually public role

The war in Ukraine is the conflict where spies came in from the cold and took center stage.

Since Russia invaded its neighbor in late February, intelligence agencies in the U.S. and Britain have been remarkably willing to go public with their secret intelligence assessments of what is happening on the battlefield — and inside the Kremlin.

The U.S. this week declassified intelligence findings claiming Russian President Vladimir Putin is being misinformed about his military’s poor performance in Ukraine by advisers scared to tell him the truth. On Thursday a British spy chief said demoralized Russian troops were refusing to carry out orders and sabotaging their own equipment.

Jeremy Fleming, who heads Britain’s electronic intelligence agency GCHQ, made the comments in a public speech where he said the “pace and scale” at which secret intelligence is being released “really is unprecedented.”