Russia Report: Long-awaited poll due to interference in the UK

It has been a long time coming, but the British public is finally about to see the details of the “Russia report”.

Almost a year and a half after its completion, the report will be released by Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee on Tuesday morning.

It is expected to provide an overview of the threat Russia poses to the UK and what has been done to counter it.

It comes after accusations of Russian interference in last year’s elections, which the Kremlin has said are false.

The report, to be released at 10:30 BST, is based on secret intelligence material from UK spy agencies as well as contributions from independent experts.

It is expected to detail the scale of Russian espionage and subversion against the United Kingdom and its allies.

In addition to traditional espionage and cyber espionage, he is also expected to explore Russia’s willingness to hunt down his enemies abroad, even killing them.

Sergei Skripal’s nerve agent poisoning in Salisbury in 2018 is one of the few recent cases in the UK and across Europe linked to Moscow.

Did Russia intrude on Scottish and Brexit referendums?

The analysis of the report on Russian interference in the UK political process is likely to be the most widely read.

The operations of Moscow’s spy agencies played a significant role in the 2016 US presidential election, and questions have long been raised about whether there were similar activities in the UK surrounding the 2014 Scottish independence referendum and the 2016 Brexit referendum.

Last week, the UK government said it believed Russian actors had attempted to intrude on the 2019 general election, but this was after the report was completed.

Some media campaigns linked to Russia at previous political events have already been identified and a more difficult question to answer may be whether there was any significant impact.

Was the UK’s response too weak?

The report is also expected to raise questions about whether successive governments have done enough to counter Moscow.

The weak response to the 2006 murder of Alexander Litvinenko with radioactive polonium in London, attributed by a judge to the Russian state, is seen as a serious mistake by many observers, including some who gave evidence to the Intelligence and Security Committee.

The response after the Salisbury poisonings is widely viewed as more effective, especially in the way it brought the allies with it.

Donations and the influence of Russian money.

But why has there been a long-term failure to deal with Russian activity?

The answer, according to those who gave evidence to the ISC, is the influence of Russia in the United Kingdom and especially the power of its money that has deeply infiltrated public life.

A whole class of people, lawyers, bankers, accountants and public relations professionals, have been enriched by the Russian money that has entered the United Kingdom, and particularly the city of London.

That has created an influential group that has constantly lobbied to avoid a hard line in Moscow, including sanctions.

If the report pays close attention to Russia’s political donations, this could be controversial.

A former Russian official, Alexander Temerko, who has donated more than £ 1 million to conservatives and whose name has appeared in the context of the report, told me last year that he wanted the report to be published and said he was a critic of the Kremlin, not his agent.

But the report is unlikely to name names.

Why was the report delayed?

The issue of political donations has been raised by some as a reason for Downing Street not to allow the report to be released before last December’s election.

But a source suggested, instead, that it was what they described as “the story of two Dominicans.”

And that Dominic Cummings, Boris Johnson’s top 10 adviser, did not want to give Dominic Grieve a platform, the former ISC president who withdrew the conservative whip over Brexit and ran unsuccessfully as an independent in the election.

• The new chairman of the intelligence committee loses the whip Tory

After many rumors, the public now finally has a chance to view the report. But you won’t see everything.

Some parts are expected to be redacted or censored. And there is also a classified version that will be for official eyes only.