GCHQ chief Jeremy Fleming warns Kremlin could launch cyber attacks on countries supportive of Ukraine

The UK's Government Communications Headquarters, known as GCHQ, said it had received intelligence indicating Russia intended to begin cyber attacks on countries that opposed its unprompted aggression against Ukraine.

Addressing a Canberra audience at the National Security College on Thursday morning, the agency's director Jeremy Fleming said it had become clear Russia President Vladimir Putin's "personal war" was a miscalculation.

The signals intelligence head cited fresh intelligence suggesting the military's low morale, logistical failures and high Russian casualty numbers were becoming harder to cover up.

"We believe Putin's advisers are afraid to tell him the truth," Mr Fleming said.

"We've seen Russian soldiers - short of weapons and morale - refusing to carry out orders, sabotaging their own equipment and even accidentally shooting down their own aircraft.

"Their command and control is in chaos. We've seen Putin lie to his own people in an attempt to hide military incompetence."

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But the devastating toll, in the meantime, was being paid for by innocent civilians in Ukraine along with Russia, he said.

Russia this week said it would scale back its operations before it later unleashed a series of attacks on the outskirts of Kyiv and besieging the northern Ukrainian city of Chernihiv.

Western countries opposing the invasion dismissed the claims as a ploy for Russia to regroup and catch Ukrainian forces off guard, following heavy losses and logistical issues for troops.

The success of Ukraine's counter-information campaigns were partly behind Russia's failures, Mr Fleming believed, with supportive governments and experts banding together to challenge the false narratives emanating from the Kremlin.

The campaigns had been informed by "deeply secret intelligence", which had been "quickly declassified to get ahead of Putin's actions".

"On this and many other subjects, deeply secret intelligence is being released to make sure the truth is heard. At this pace and scale, it really is unprecedented," he said.

"In my view, intelligence is only worth collecting if we use it, so I unreservedly welcome this development."

But the senior intelligence boss warned key technologies would be shaped by authoritarian states, like China, as they looked to dominate "cyber and the fibre" unless democratic countries worked together to prevent it.

"Without action, it is increasingly apparent that the key technologies on which we all rely on for prosperity and security won't be shaped and controlled by the West in the future," he said.

"If we don't act - with our allies, with our partners and with the private sector - we will see undemocratic values as the default for vast swathes of future tech and the standards that govern it.

"There is no doubt that democratic nations are facing a moment of reckoning."

For this reason, he believed China President Xi Jinping and President Putin's close personal relationship has an expiry date as China would not be well-served by its closeness to a regime that "wilfully and illegally ignores" global governance.

Long-term, Mr Fleming said he saw China squeezing Russia "out of the equation" after its use to them expired.