LONDON – A long-awaited report has found the UK to be a continuous target for Russian cyber attacks.
Now the British government is fighting on another front: criticism that it took its eye off the ball and did not seek evidence of Kremlin meddling.
“We categorically reject any suggestion that the UK actively avoided investigating Russia,” Security Minister James Brokenshire said on Wednesday, adding that the government “was not afraid to act where necessary to protect the UK and our allies from any state threat. “
The 55-page report from Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee said the UK is a target for Russian disinformation and described Russian influence in Britain as “the new normal.”
He also said that intelligence agencies had not sought evidence of Russian meddling in the 2016 Brexit vote, although Moscow had tried to influence the 2014 Scottish independence referendum.
The Kremlin denies any Russian interference in the affairs of the United Kingdom.
The report has long been a source of speculation, with publication delayed for nine months. It also comes at a low tide in Russia-UK relations after Britain accused the Russian state of ordering the poisoning of former Russian military spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter with a nerve agent in the English city of Salisbury in March 2018.
To retaliate, the United Kingdom expelled 23 Russian diplomats who were allegedly acting as undeclared intelligence officers.
In 2006, former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko died after drinking green tea poisoned with radioactive polonium 210 at a London hotel. A British judge ruled in 2016 that he was killed by order of Russia’s FSB security agency, and that the action was “probably approved” by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
So for some, the report’s main findings were a bit of a surprise.
“It is what we have been saying for the last decade, and it is a weary sigh when we see that people are finally realizing it,” said Keir Giles, Russia’s projection expert on power at Chatham House and author of “Moscow Rules , which prompts Russia to confront the West. “
“The big surprise for us was the big hole in the middle of the report, which was the lack of investigation of electoral interference.”
That was the sentiment of the former chairman of the intelligence committee under whose leadership the investigation took place from November 2017 to November 2019.
“Someone took their eye off the ball or never really looked at the ball in the first place and just assumed this was not a problem,” said Dominic Grieve, a former conservative lawmaker who was effectively kicked out of the party. about Brexit, he told Sky News on Tuesday.
Opposition lawmakers have also harshly criticized the government, and a senior Labor Party member Nick Thomas-Symonds said the government “has consistently underestimated the Russian threat in the past six years.”
He accused the government of “a chronic and systemic failure where the government has not had a single responsible minister or responsible department to defend our democracy.”
Although Prime Minister Boris Johnson has been in office for just a year, his party has been in power or in a coalition government since 2010.
In addition to highlighting an “immediate and urgent threat” from Russia’s “malicious cyber activity”, the report also exposes how wealthy Russians, some with close ties to Putin, sold the influence and integrated into the commercial and social scene of Greater Brittany.
The findings come more than a year after special counsel Robert Mueller found evidence of Russian attempts to interfere in the 2016 US presidential election. That report failed to find evidence that President Donald Trump’s campaign “coordinated or conspired” with the Russian government.
However, on Wednesday, Johnson, like other ministers and lawmakers, said the UK was aware of the threat from Russia.
Britain “leads the world cautiously in the face of Russian interference,” Johnson said in Parliament.
Johnson also dismissed criticism of the delay in releasing the report, saying it was motivated by a desire to “give the impression that Russian interference is somehow responsible for Brexit.”
The British government has repeatedly said there is no evidence of Russia’s successful interference in the 2016 UK referendum to leave the European Union.
Brokenshire said Wednesday that the government had pledged to bring new legislation to counter hostile state activity and espionage, modernizing current laws that are not equipped to deal with current threats.
According to Giles, the focus on the threat from Russia is welcome, but he warned against recommendations in the report forgotten or superseded by other events.
“This will not stop because this is a predetermined state and a normal condition for Moscow,” Giles said of the Russian meddling efforts. “Playing well in the hope that Russia will play well again is as desperate as ever.”
