Cliff Notes
- The former head of MI5 suggests the UK could already be at war with Russia, citing extensive cyber and physical attacks.
- Baroness Manningham-Buller reflects on past misjudgements about Russia, emphasising its ongoing hostility towards the West.
- She warns that cuts to foreign aid may create opportunities for China to expand its influence globally.
Ex-MI5 chief says those who think UK already at war with Russia ‘may be right’ | UK News
The former head of MI5 has said those who think the UK is already at war with Russia “may be right”.
In June, UK defence advisor Dr Fiona Hill said that because of “the poisonings, assassinations, sabotage operations, all kinds of cyber attacks and influence operations,” it was fair to conclude “Russia is at war with us”.
Appearing on the House of Lords’ official podcast, Baroness Manningham-Buller said: “Dr Hill probably knows more about Putin than anybody else.”
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She added: “Since the invasion of Ukraine, and the various things I read that the Russians have been doing here, sabotage, intelligence collection, attacking people, and so on… Fiona Hill may be right in saying we’re already at war with Russia.
“It’s a different sort of war, but the hostility, the cyber attacks, the physical attacks, intelligence work, is extensive.”
‘We were wrong’ about Russia in 2005
Baroness Manningham-Buller served in MI5 for 34 years, becoming director general in 2002 before retiring in 2007.
Speaking to the Lord Speaker’s Corner podcast, she recalled meeting Russian President Vladimir Putin after the G8 meeting in Gleneagles, Scotland.
“We all hoped that the past history of Russia wouldn’t prevail, and, at the end of the Soviet Union, we would have a potential partner,” she said, “and that was one of the reasons why Putin was with us for the G8 in 2005.”
The former head of MI5 added: “I met him when he came back to London. But actually, we were wrong in that, because Russia is extremely hostile to the West, and we’ve seen it in all sorts of ways.
“I didn’t anticipate that within a year, he’d be ordering the murder on London streets of [Russian dissident Alexander] Litvinenko.”
Mr Litvinenko, a former FSB agent, died in 2006, almost three weeks after drinking tea poisoned with radioactive polonium-210, a rare and very potent radioactive isotope.
Before fleeing Russia and being given British nationality, Mr Litvinenko had accused Mr Putin of corruption. It is understood that he ingested the tea during a meeting with two Russian spies at a London hotel.