Espionage in the UK

London has long been a hotbed of espionage. This is because it is the world’s only Alpha+++ city. As a financial centre it is second only to NYC. Moreover, it has 7 airports. Every nationality in the world has a diasporic community in London, United Kingdom. Therefore, foreign spies will try to blend into these communities or recruit agents among them. Because London is so multicultural and multireligious, people of any ethnicity can plausibly claim to be Londoners even if their English is imperfect.

The United Kingdom has two intelligence agencies: MI5 is domestic intelligence and MI6 is foreign intelligence. Both are headquartered in London.

The United Kingdom is a founder member of NATO. Therefore, it is an ally of the USA, Canada, Germany, Poland, France and others.

The British position on Ukraine is one of fulsome support for Ukrainian freedom. It has donated militarily and pecuniarily to Ukraine. The UK plays hosts to over 100 000 Ukrainian refugees. The United Kingdom runs Operation Interflex: this is giving military training to Ukrainians. Operation Interflex takes place in British Army bases. The instructors are from other allied nations such as Sweden, Canada, Romania and New Zealand.

Russian ire at the UK is patent. The former president of Russia, Dmitry Medvedev has said that Russia should reduce the United Kingdom to radioactive ash. A Russian TV host Sokolov has made similar threats.

Moscow is unhappy that British support to Ukraine has kept Ukraine in the fight for over three years. Russia would like the United Kingdom to end it assistance to Ukraine. Moscow could achieve this through intimidation, through persuading the UK that Ukraine is a lost cause and through bringing an anti-Ukrainian party to power in the UK. Intelligence work is involved in all of this.

Yuri Beremenov said that the KGB in the Soviet era spent 85% of its time and resources on shaping public opinion in other countries. This included disinformation and demoralisation.

Putin is a former KGB officer. He certainly liked to deceive the public in Russia and abroad. Russia made massive efforts to sway elections in other countries and achieved some success.

Russia and the UK have spied on each other for centuries. This was in Central Asia in the 19th century. As the Britishers expanded out of India they wanted Central Asian chiefs to be amenable to them. They accomplished this through offering financial inducements, intelligence, political support and by the issuance of threats. St Petersburg did the same thing. This was called by Britons ‘the Great Game’. The Russkies had an even better moniker for it: ‘the Tournament of Shadows.’

There has long been some anglophobia in Russia. There is a Russian adage, ‘the Englishwoman does the dirty’ which roughly means that British people are guilty of chicanery.

Russian ships have been seen inspecting subsea cables to the UK. These carry internet traffic. Would Russia try to cut them? This could be catastrophic for the financial sector in London. As the United Kingdom is an archipelago it is very susceptible to such attacks.

Russia has often launched cyberattacks. It has done this against the USA, the Baltic states and the United Kingdom. Cyberattacks were a big part of the attack on Ukraine in 2022.

The British Army and intelligence services are expanding their cyber capabilities. They recognise that fending off cyberattacks is vital. They also wish to counterattack. This will make Russia feel the pain if it cyberattacks. Russia may then conclude it is not worth it.

Russia often engages in grey zone warfare. This is not white zone: espionage activities that can be conducted against even a friendly foreign state. Nor is it black zone: open warfare. Grey zone is in between. The United Kingdom and Russia are openly hostile to each other. Such enmity means that grey zone warfare commences such as cyber-attacks and disinformation campaigns.

There have already been kinetic operations in the UK by Russia. Kinetic meaning ‘of movement’. In kinetic operations things go ‘bang’, burn down and people get killed.

Since the mass of expulsions of Russian diplomats who were intelligence officers in Europe in 2022 the Russians have very few intelligence officers left in Europe. They cannot do a lot of in person spying of kinetic operations themselves. They have therefore hired gangsters to do it.

In 2024 a warehouse In London that contained military assets due to be shipped to Ukraine burnt down. Several men are on trial for this.

Russia has hired people to burn down shops in Lithuania and Poland. They hire local people via criminal syndicates. The inflammators often do not know who is paying them or why. They are desperate people or low-level hoodlums who do it. If the arsonist has to be told a reason why the building is being burnt down, then he will be told it is gang warfare.

Moscow likes to hire Ukrainians to carry out arson attacks. That is because if they are caught it makes it seem unlikely that Russia would be behind it. The arsonist does not know on whose behest he is lighting the fire. Moreover, it will cause a spike in anti-Ukrainian prejudice.

In 2025 some property belonging to Sir Keir Starmer was set on fire in London. It was not his official residence Number 10 Downing Street. No one was killed in the fire. Some men are on trial for this. One is Ukrainian and none is Russian.

Russia attempted the murder of Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury, United Kingdom in 2018. Skripal was a Russian intelligence officer who was a spy for the British. He was caught in the late 1990s and served a long prison sentence. He was released as part of a spy exchange in 2010. His daughter came to visit him in the UK in 2018, and Russian spies followed her to find him.

The attempted slaying was during the Brexit process. The Kremlin must have reasoned that as relations between the UK and the rest of the EU were not cordial there would be no solidarity. The price paid by Russian in terms of diplomatic expulsion would be low. In fact, they miscalculated, and dozens of undeclared intelligence officers were expelled from all across the EU.

Bellingcat is an open-source journalism intelligence project. They expose espionage operations using published photos and data. They identified the Salisbury poisoners as two Russan GRU officers. The GRU is the Main Intelligence Directorate – it is part of the armed forces. The GRU has a military approach: kill the enemy. The GRU officers were issued with false passports by Russia. They had immediately consecutive serial numbers!

Bellingcat takes its name from the tale: Who will bell the cat? Here a brave mouse puts a bell on a sleeping cat so that when the cat wakes and comes to hunt the mice the bell rings and the mice have fair warning to run away and hide.

Hristo Grozev is a Bulgarian journalist who heads Bellingcat. Mr. Grozev was resident in Vienna, Austria. Russia planned to murder him or kidnap him. He has since moved to the United States to make it harder for the Russians to find and kill him.

In 2024 a Russian spy ring in the UK was broken up. Four Bulgarian nationals were convicted of various crimes. Why would they spy for Russia? Bulgaria is a Slavic and Orthodox Christian country. It could be out of pro-Russian sentiment. It could simply be for money. Russians hired Bulgarians partly as they are less suspected than Russians. They are EU citizens and can travel to the United Kingdom without a visa. In fact the four Bulgarians had been long term residents of the UK when they were busted.

Putin has murdered thousands of people in Russian. Most of them are Chechen civilians. You might say what he does in his own country is his own business. You may say that even what he does to Russians outside his own country is his own business. But he has also murdered foreign civilians in foreign countries.

There are a number of other people from the former USSR who died in mysterious circumstances in the United Kingdom over the past 20 years.

Alexander Litvinenko was a former FSB officer who defected to the United Kingdom. He was revolted at the way the FSB became an adjunct to gangsters. Moreover, he saw the extreme sadism of the FSB and Russian Army against Chechens. He received British citizenship in 2006. Days later he was poisoned with polonium in a London hotel by Andrei Lugovoy. Lugovoy was a former KGB and Federal Protective Service (FSO) officer who had befriended Litvinenko. The FSO is tasked with protecting Russian VIPs. Lugovoy had previously worked for Berezovsky. Litvinenko converted to Islam before his death. Russian State murder on British soil was a new low. Litvinenko had not believed that Putin would murder him once he became a British citizen.

The murder of Litvinenko showed how reckless the GRU is. They used polonium 210 in a crowded city. They left traces of it in their hotel room and in the plane that they flew in back to Moscow. It could easily have killed others.

British intelligence assessed that Putin must have authorised the assassination. The repercussions of it were too grave for the GRU to do so without authorisation.

The Kremlin read British psychology directly. There was a lot of Russian money coming into the UK at the time. The British Government had no wish to jeopardise that. Moreover, it could not be proven 100% that the Russian State was behind the slaying.

The United Kingdom requested the extradition of Andrei Lugovoy to stand trial for the murder of Litvinenko. Russia never extradites its own people. They offered to put him on trial in Russia. This makes a mockery of Russia’s claims that there is no case against Lugovoy. Why put him on trial if there is no prima facie case? The UK turned down Russia’s offer to try him. Russian courts are notorious for their flagrantly farcical trials. Lugovoy was later elected to the Russian Parliament as a member of the United Russia Party: Putin’s one. Lugovoy denied the murder of Litvenenko but quoted Stalin, ‘when a person disappears so does the problem.’

In 2008 Badri Patarkatsishvili was a Georgian billionaire. He died of a sudden heart attack in Leatherhead, United Kingdom. He had no history of heart problems. He had made his fortune in Russia.

In 2012 Alexaner Perepilichnyy collapsed and died while out for a run. His body found an unusual poison in his system. Poison is one of Putin’s preferred methods. At public dinners Putin is served a full meal but never eats a morsel nor drinks a drop lest people at his table poison his food.

In 2013 Boris Berezovsky was a Russian multi-millionaire. He was one of the seven bankers who is said to have unofficially ruled Russia in the late 1990s. He shoehorned Putin into power. But Berezovsky and Putin soon fell out spectacularly. Berezovsky moved to the United Kingdom and was an outspoken anglophile. Russia requested his extradition. A court granted him asylum on the basis that the extradition request was politically motivated, and he would not receive a fair trial. Berezovsky called for the forcible overthrow of Putin. Berezovksy lost a lawsuit against Roman Abramovich and was going to have to pay out several million GBP. He was still a multi-millionaire; he had a girlfriend and six children. He had a lot to live for. Berezovsky was found hanged at home aged 67. Was it murder or suicide? If anyone would know how to kill someone and make it look like suicide it would be the GRU.

Berezovksy died in Wentworth – a gated community. It would be very hard for an assassin to get in kill him and get out undetected. If it was murder, it will have been an inside job. A favourite GRU tactic is to recruit someone in a target’s inner circle to do the killing or else to get an undercover GRU officer hired onto the staff of the target for assassination. A coroner’s court recorded an open verdict: it was unclear if the death was suicide or murder.

In 2018 Nikolai Glushkov died in New Malden London from strangulation. His killer has never been caught. He was a close ally of Berezovsky. Glushkov had been director of Aeroflot – the main Russian airline. He was also an outspoken opponent of Putin.

Russia has long considered wet operations (assassinations) worth it. This is to terrorise people at home and abroad. If a dissident flees the country, he will know that the long arm of Putin will reach him wherever he is.

There were attempts to assassinate Sir Oleg Gordievsky. He is the KGB officer who started to spy for the United Kingdom in the 1970s whilst posted as a Soviet diplomat in Denmark. He was the master of five languages (Russian, German, Swedish, Danish and English). Gordievksy was appointed KGB station chief in London in the 1980s. He was called back to Moscow when suspicion fell on him because of revelations from an FBI man who informed the KGB of a British spy in their midst. Gordievsky stood up to interrogation and astonishingly escaped to the United Kingdom in 1985. He was knighted for services to the United Kingdom. Despite attempts to murder him he lived on to die a natural death in 2025 at the age of 87.

In May 2024 three men accused of being spies were arrested in the United Kingdom. Two were Chinese and one was British. The British man Matthew Trickett was released on bail. Th

is is indicative of the court not thinking that the crime was that severe and that he was a low flight risk. It is alleged that Trickett and his confederates were surveiling Chinese dissentients in the UK. A few days later the Briton Matthew Trickett was found dead in a park in Maidenhead near London. How did a healthy young man suddenly die? Was it suicide? Or was he silenced by the Chinese on the basis that dead men tell no tales.

Trickett was a former Royal Marine. He had been working as an immigration enforcement officer at the time of his death. It seems that this was very useful to China as he had details about Hong Kongers who had moved to the UK because they objected to Hong Kong’s oppression by China. Many Hong Kongers born in the British era were British National Overseas (BNO). This BNO status allowed them to move to the UK.

There was a Chinese spy close to Prince Andrew named Yang Tengbo who went by the alias Chris Yang. MI5 warned prominent people to stay away from him. The price was too stupid to heed this. Yang was a very successful businessman with links to HSBC.

Christine Lee was a Chinese solicitor practising in the UK. She was also secretly a CCP activist. Miss Lee donated GBP 650 000 to various political parties. She had regular access to the UK Parliament

China has been caught recruiting a British man who worked in Parliament. He is a white Briton and not ethnically Chinese. The UK is 1% ethnically Chinese. Most Chinese Britons live in London. There are also people who are Chinese citizens resident in the United Kingdom.

There are tens of thousands of Chinese students in the United Kingdom. Some of them are members of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Members of the CCP swear lifelong loyalty to the party. There are members of the CCP who work in various banks and corporations in the United Kingdom. The UK is naïve to allow them so much access to sensitive information. Huawei also runs some of the mobile phone network.

China has tried cyberattacks on politicians who denounced the oppressive actions of the Chinese state and the Uighur Genocide.

Sir Iain Duncan Smith is one of the most vociferous critics of the CCP.

China wanted to build a new embassy in London. MI5 objected because it would facilitate spying by China.

Most countries spy on each other. The United Kingdom is no exception.

The People’s Republic of China (PRC) ran unofficial police stations in the United Kingdom. These were shut down. They were a gross violation of British sovereignty.

The PRC organises Chinese students in the UK to protest for the state’s causes. They protest against protest! Some of these staged demonstrations were denunciations of the democracy movement in Hong Kong.

Mossad is active in the United Kingdom. That is because they spy on Arabs.

The Iranians are also spying in the UK. That is due the adversarial relationship between the two states. Moreover, they surveil dissidents. As Russia finds it very difficult to conduct intelligence operations in the United Kingdom they have their allies the Iranians do it.