LONDON – Russia has put the information together as part of a long-term, broad effort to interfere with the British political system and sow discord, and those efforts were largely ignored by successive British governments, according to a long-awaited report released Tuesday by the British Parliament
While the report examined Russia’s possible role in fueling conflict over some of the UK’s most divisive political battles in recent years, including the 2016 Brexit referendum that rejected European Union membership and a referendum 2014 in which Scotland voted to remain part of the United Kingdom – did not draw conclusions on the success of those efforts.
Instead, the authors of the report told British lawmakers that they could not speak to the effectiveness of the Russian campaign of influence because the government had not heeded the threat despite years of mounting evidence.
It raised a fundamental question: Who is protecting the country’s democratic system?
“No one is,” was the response given by the authors.
“The government here has disappointed us,” said Kevan Jones, a member of parliament who served on the intelligence committee that published the report, at a press conference.
“The outrage is not if there is interference, the outrage is that nobody wanted to know if there was interference,” Jones said. “What we do know about Russian interference in the UK is that it is the new normal.”
The publication of Russia’s report comes almost a year and a half after the conclusion of the investigation by the British Parliament’s intelligence and security committee, the body that oversees the country’s spy agencies.
Despite the long wait, it comes at a time of great interest in the extent of Russian interference in Western politics, ahead of the US presidential election in November.
The report, based on secret intelligence as well as evidence from independent experts, aims to summarize the threat Russia poses to Britain and the effectiveness of countermeasures.
Concerns about Russian meddling and aggression date back more than a decade to Alexander V. Litvinenko’s death in November 2006.
A former KGB officer and Kremlin critic, Litvinenko had obtained asylum in Britain. He was killed in central London by the radioactive poison polonium 210, which is believed to have been administered by a cup of tea. A subsequent British investigation concluded that his murder “was probably approved” by Russia’s President Vladimir V. Putin and the head of the country’s intelligence service.
In 2018, Sergei Skripal, another former Russian spy, and his 33-year-old daughter Yulia were found seriously ill at a bank in Salisbury, England, after a poisoning attack that left them hospitalized for weeks. Britain accused two Russians of using a rare nerve agent to try to kill Mr. Skripal.
Although the intelligence and security committee’s report was seen and approved by Downing Street in 2019, its publication was delayed before a general election in December that brought British Prime Minister Boris Johnson to a large majority in Parliament.
Critics of Mr. Johnson say he has been pledged by donations to his Conservative Party of wealthy Russian donors living in Britain and argue that the report was unnecessarily delayed.
The report itself raised questions about Russia’s influence on the country’s power corridors.
“It is remarkable that several members of the House of Lords have business interests linked to Russia, or work directly for the main Russian companies linked to the Russian state,” according to the report. “These relationships must be carefully analyzed, given the potential for the Russian state to exploit them.”
Last week Dominic Raab, the foreign secretary, said that Russian “actors” almost certainly tried to interfere in the 2019 general election through the online “amplification” of stolen documents related to trade talks between Great Britain and the United States.
After the elections, there was a second delay in releasing the Russia report until Downing Street agreed to membership of a new intelligence and security committee.
