Assassination plots, sabotage, cyber-attacks and the manipulation of information by Russia and other hostile states mean that “the frontline is everywhere”, the new head of MI6 will warn on Monday.
Blaise Metreweli, giving her first speech in the job, is expected to say the UK faces a new “age of uncertainty” where the rules of conflict are being rewritten, particularly in light of wider Kremlin aggression after the invasion of Ukraine.
“The export of chaos is a feature, not a bug, in the Russian approach to international engagement,” the agency’s first female chief will argue, and “until Putin is forced to change his calculus” it is expected to continue.
Similar comments about the scale of the threat, particularly from Russia, are expected to be made by Air Chief Marshal Richard Knighton, the chief of the defence staff, who is due to say in a separate speech that “the situation is more dangerous than I have known during my career” and call for the country as a whole to be “stepping up”.
Their pre-released remarks come as Keir Starmer is due to fly to Berlin for an emergency summit with European leaders, including Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, as well as Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff in an effort to persuade the US to accept an alternative European peace plan for Ukraine.
Russia is identified as an acute threat by Metreweli in her speech, due to be released in full on Monday afternoon, with an “aggressive, expansionist, and revisionist” mindset that has led to Vladimir Putin ordering the invasion of its neighbour, and deploying aggressive supporting tactics across Europe.
“Putin should be in no doubt: our support is enduring. The pressure we apply on Ukraine’s behalf will be sustained,” the spy chief is expected to say, though the diplomatic reality of the past month is that the US position is uncertain, with Trump and Witkoff previously favouring Russian demands.
Threats faced by the UK include the attempt to kill Sergei and Yulia Skripal in Salisbury in 2018 with a nerve toxin, which led to the death of the British woman Dawn Sturgess. A public inquiry into the death of Sturgess, who accidentally picked up the poison bottle, concluded this month that the Russian president was “morally responsible”.
They also include Russian efforts to use artificial intelligence to create disinformation on a vast scale, to create online videos aimed at undermining public support for Ukraine or spreading false rumours about the health of the Princess of Wales, as highlighted in a recent speech by the foreign secretary, Yvette Cooper.
Six Bulgarians living in the UK were jailed in May for their part in a spy plot, which included the hostile surveillance of an investigative journalist known for Kremlin exposés across Europe and an attempt to retrieve the phone numbers of Ukrainian soldiers thought to be training in Germany.
However, in the advance excerpts, there was no explicit mention of China,…
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