Russia meddled in the 2014 Scottish referendum, and the British government did not request an in-depth assessment of possible Kremlin-led interference in the Brexit vote, according to the British Parliament’s intelligence and security committee.
“There have been credible open source comments suggesting that Russia launched influence campaigns in connection with the Scottish independence referendum in 2014,” said the report, which ended in March 2019 but was archived until Tuesday.
He said there were open-source hints that Russia tried to influence the Brexit campaign, but that the UK government had not sought deep evidence of meddling.
The report presents Russia as a hostile power that represents a significant threat to the United Kingdom and the West on a variety of fronts, from espionage and cyber attacks to electoral meddling and dirty money laundering.
“It appears that Russia regards the UK as one of its main Western intelligence targets,” the report said.
The report, which was leaked prior to publication on the Guido Fawkes website, said the British government did not go deep enough into possible Russian meddling in the 2016 Brexit referendum.
‘Anti-Russian hysteria’
The Kremlin said that Russia has never interfered in the electoral processes of another country. Russia has repeatedly denied meddling in the West, calling the United States and the United Kingdom “anti-Russian hysteria.”
When discussing the EU referendum, the UK parliamentary report is heavily redacted, and there was a classified annex that was not published, but lawmakers called for a proper investigation.
“In response to our request for written evidence at the beginning of the Investigation, MI5 initially provided only six lines of text. It stated that ***, before referring to academic studies,” reads the redacted version.
“However, the Committee’s view is that the UK Intelligence Community should make a similar assessment of possible Russian interference in the EU referendum and that an unclassified summary be published,” the report said.
The committee viewed Russia, rapidly losing its superpower influence after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, as a source of corrupt money that had been well received in London, the world’s leading international financial capital.
“The United Kingdom welcomed Russian money, and few, if any, questions were asked about the provenance of this considerable wealth,” the report said. “The United Kingdom has been seen as a particularly favorable destination for Russian oligarchs and their money.”
“It offered ideal mechanisms by which illicit finances could be recycled through what has been called the London ‘laundry’,” the report said.
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