UK may already be at war with Russia, ex-MI5 head suggests • The Register

The former head of MI5 says hostile cyberattacks and intelligence operations directed by The Kremlin indicate the UK might already be at war with Russia.

Baroness Manningham-Buller, who served as Director General of the intelligence agency from 2002 to 2007 and was the second woman to fill the role, made the claim on Lord Speaker’s Corner, the podcast of the House of Lords.

She was referencing previous comments from Fiona Hill, the British-American foreign affairs expert who advised the White House on Vladimir Putin and Russia during Donald Trump’s first term.

“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, I think she may be right in saying we’re already at war with Russia,” the Baroness told podcast host Lord McFall of Alcluith.

“It’s a different sort of war, but the hostility, the cyberattacks, the physical attacks, intelligence work, is extensive,” she said.

Russian action in cyberspace has long been causing problems for Britain and its allies. This summer, the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) issued a warning after uncovering a malware campaign targeting Microsoft login credentials and passwords as part of an espionage effort. The agency attributed the attacks to APT28 (also known as Fancy Bear and Foreign Blizzard) an offensive cyber group linked to Russia’s military intelligence service, the GRU.

The Kremlin hacking group has also targeted the UK as part of a campaign directed at governments, tech firms and logistics suppliers which have been aiding Ukraine since Russia’s invasion.

Wider Russian state-backed cyberattacks have been zeroing in on organisations in the west for years – while it’s also been suggested that Russian-based ransomware gangs and other cyber criminals work closely with Moscow’s intelligence services.

Baroness Manningham-Buller, who started her career at MI5 in 1974, was serving as the agency’s Director General in 2005 when Putin visited the UK for the G8 Summit.

At the time, it was hoped this would lead to improved relations with Russia, but that wasn’t to be the case. Just over a year later, former FSB intelligence officer and Russian defector Alexander Litvinenko was assassinated via poisoning in London by a former KGB agent. It’s suspected he was murdered on Putin’s personal orders.

“We all hoped that the past history of Russia wouldn’t prevail, and that at the end of the Soviet Union, we would have a potential partner,” she said.

“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 Litvinenko.”

Recalling her meeting with Putin during the G8 Summit, Baroness Manningham-Buller described her feelings on the Russian premier and they were not complimentary. “I thought he was quite an unpleasant man,” she said.

Historically, a relationship much closer to home – that of MI5 and MI6 – has been detailed as a hostile rivalry. But the Baroness was keen to put that particular story to bed.

“We work very closely together. The le Carré view that the two organizations are constantly at each other’s throats is entirely fictional… it’s a close-knit community.” ®