UK defence chief warns Russia ‘Putin can’t even win Ukraine’

Admiral Sir Tony Radakin used his final public speech as Chief of the Defence Staff to deliver one of his bluntest assessments yet of Russia’s strategic position, telling an audience in Washington that “Putin doesn’t want a war with NATO. He can’t even win a war against Ukraine.”

Speaking at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, Radakin said Russia’s prolonged conflict had forced the Kremlin into an economic corner. “Russia has had to shift its economy to a war effort, which it will be incredibly hard to row back from,” he noted.

He described President Putin’s situation as a stark choice: “Agree a ceasefire with his stated aims incomplete and little to show his people in return for the lost blood and treasure; or continue the war indefinitely, and watch his country become even weaker and poorer chasing the false dream of subjugating Ukraine.”

Radakin argued that Moscow’s increased reliance on sabotage and sub-threshold attacks was a sign of its inability to escalate directly. “The very reason Russia is pursuing sub-threshold attacks against us is because Russia is unwilling and unable to do so through more overt means,” he said. While warning that “Russia is more dangerous because she is weaker”, he also stressed that the Kremlin has “more cause to be fearful of an Alliance of 32 than the other way around.”

Rejecting an overly defensive posture, Radakin said he was “wary of too great an emphasis on homeland defence, or a fortress Europe”. Instead, he called for a forward-leaning NATO strategy: “We need to defend forward. The policy of NATO is to deter. And we deter by demonstrating to Russia that we are stronger, that we are ready to fight, and that we will beat them.”