Russia‘s military intelligence agency GRU is trying to cause chaos in Britain and Europe, the head of Britain’s counter-intelligence agency MI5, Ken McCallum, warned on Tuesday. According to him, the biggest terrorist threat to Britain is the resurgent Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, Reuters wrote.
Russia’s GRU is trying to cause ‘chaos’, says MI5 chief Ken McCallum | Video: Reuters
During his annual address on the threats facing Britain, McCallum said that GRU agents were “carrying out arson attacks, sabotage and other even more dangerous actions in Britain with increasing recklessness” in connection with Britain’s support for Ukraine. Since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Britain has been one of the countries that has provided the most military assistance to Kiev.
McCallum recalled that after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, European countries expelled more than 750 Russian diplomats, the vast majority of whom were spies. This had an impact on the functioning of the Russian secret services. But Moscow began to use third parties, such as operatives of private agencies and criminals, who are tasked with doing the “dirty work”. This has negatively affected the level of their operations, which are now more easily disrupted.
According to McCallum, MI5 has also responded to 20 Iran-backed operations since 2022, but most of its work has been on Islamist extremism, followed by far-right terrorism. As for Iran, according to McCallum, it was behind “one plot after another” on British soil. According to him, the number of investigations into possible threats to the British state increased by 48 percent last year, which he linked to the criminal activities of Russia and Iran.
The counterintelligence chief said that given the different types of threats and threats from other countries, MI5 “had a pretty tough job” and had to deal with a “dizzying range of ideologies and beliefs”.
The BBC wrote on its website that McCallum has spoken publicly about threats from Russia and Iran in the past, but so far his accusations against Moscow have not been so strong.
Iran responded to McCallum’s statement on Wednesday with a negative statement. Tehran rejects the repeated “accusations”, said Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaj. Instead, he accused Britain of harboring “terrorist” groups who, he said, use freedom of speech to promote violence. Tehran also called on London to reconsider its policy towards Iran and “West Asia”.
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