Sir John Sawers, the former head of MI6, has warned against stepping up pressure on Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, over Ukraine and said any change in power in the Kremlin “may well be for the worse”.

The west would have to learn to live with Putin, however unpalatable that may seem, Sawers told an audience of war studies students at King’s College, London. Provoking him could deepen the security crisis facing Europe, he suggested.



“The Ukraine crisis is no longer just about Ukraine,” he said. “It’s now a much bigger, more dangerous crisis, between Russia and western countries, about values and order in Europe.”



Britain’s recently retired chief spymaster said Russia had a formidable nuclear arsenal and Putin wanted these ultimate weapons in his armoury to project raw strength. Russia may have rejected European values but, Sawers said, “we deal with the Russia we have, not the Russia we’d like to have”.

The west “could take on Moscow stepping up our response. Provide weapons to Ukraine so it can defend itself. More stringent sanctions. But how would Mr Putin respond?” Sawers asked.

He added: “As long as Mr Putin sees the issue in terms of Russia’s own security he will be prepared to go further than us. So he would respond with further escalation on the ground. Perhaps cyber attacks against us. We have thousands of deaths in Ukraine. We could start to get tens of thousands. Then what?”

Sawers, who gave his lecture the title The Limits to Security, continued: “Ukrainians look to us to help them have their chance to embrace the order and values we enjoy here in modern Europe. We and they may end up with a new debilitating frozen conflict in Ukraine, well into the future. That is a wretched outcome for Ukrainians. But it may be the least bad attainable outcome.”

Sawers said efforts by the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, to restore calm deserved the west’s full support. He added: “Once we have calm – if we have calm – we’ll need a new approach to co-existence with president Putin’s Russia.”

He then warned: “The convergence between Russia and the west which we had hoped for after the cold war won’t happen while he is in charge. We now know that. Any foreseeable change of power in Russia may well be for the worse. Managing relations with Russia will be the defining problem in European security for years to come.”

Sawers’ remarks reflected the overwhelming view in Britain’s national security establishment which, with the exception of some former generals, is urging caution over Ukraine and recognises, as Sawers put it on Monday, “in the wake of Iraq and Afghanistan Britain is pulling back from international intervention, just as America pulled back after the Vietnam war”.

Sawers observed: “When crisis erupted in Libya, we didn’t feel it right to sit by as Gaddafi crushed decent Libyans demanding an end to dictatorship. But we didn’t want to get embroiled in Libya’s problems by sending in ground forces ... No one held the ring ... Result? Growing chaos, exploited by fanatics.”

He added that thanks “in large part” to Edward Snowden, the US National Security Agency whistleblower, “all of us” were more at risk from terrorism and cyber attack, mainly because technology companies had scaled back “previous quiet cooperation with intelligence agencies”.

He repeated his appeal to technology companies, governments, and the public, to work together. “None of us can afford for terrorists to use Facebook and other social media to plot their next attack, confident that no one can monitor them.”