Vladimir Putin has moved on from ‘revenge hits’ to pursuing his war aims on the streets of the UK, according to a seasoned intelligence expert.
Kevin Riehle said that Russia’s priorities for covert activity are supporting the all-out attack on Ukraine and ‘increasing fear’ among opponents.
As the Dawn Sturgess Inquiry concludes, the lecturer in intelligence and international security gave his take on the Kremlin’s shadow games.
He gave ‘zero chance’ that the Salisbury culprits will be brought to justice, but said the final report ‘sends a message’, with the related expulsion of Russian diplomats forcing the Kremlin to use less reliable proxies.
Since the hit on the Skripals in 2018, during which Ms Sturgess, 44, was fatally exposed to Novichok, Russia has switched focus from using its own people to recruiting foreign nationals via mediums such as Telegram.
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Mr Riehle, of Brunel University, University of London, said: ‘Russia has recently had some success in recruiting people who are willing to listen to their side of the story, examples include the Reform politician Nathan Gill in Wales and the arson attack in East London.
‘Telegram is new recruiting ground’
‘But for the most part they are the exception, there are probably more people in the UK who are sympathetic to Ukraine.
‘Their diplomatic mission is probably under heavy intelligence pressure so they haven’t had the freedom in the UK to operate as they would like.
‘The fact they are having to reach out via channels such as Telegram means they are having a hard time meeting people in person.’
The UK expelled 23 Russian diplomats in the wake of the Salisbury nerve agent attack, an attempted hit on retired Russian military intelligence officer Sergei Skripal, which left him and his daughter, Yulia, in hospital.
Although the pair survived, Ms Sturgess, 44, died after spraying herself with Novichok contained in a discarded perfume bottle.
UK counter-terror police have identified three suspects working for the GRU military intelligence service, but the evidence points to the involvement of a wider network.
‘Aim is to increase fear’
Without spies or other actors working under official cover, intelligence experts believe the Kremlin’s spymasters are recruiting outsiders.
Cases have included the Bulgarian spy ring and the Wagner group-directed attack on a warehouse in East London being used to supply humanitarian aid and StarLink satellite equipment to Ukraine.
‘Russia’s first aim is to support the war in Ukraine; it is the driving national security priority right now,’ the US national security community veteran said. ‘The second goal is to silence opposition to Russia.
‘Most of the missions undertaken by the Bulgarians convicted in the UK were directed against opposition figures in the UK and some overseas.
‘Dylan Earl, the warehouse arson plotter, had a follow-up assignment he didn’t have a chance to fulfil against a Russian opposition figure in the UK as well. The aim is to increase fear in the minds of anyone, particularly from Russia, who opposes Russia’s actions.
‘These are direct extensions of how Russian intelligence and security services operate inside their own borders.
‘A less successful mission is to convince internal and external audiences that Russia is winning the war. It is harder to do that in the UK than say Hungary or Austria.’
‘Double agents’
Earl, from Leicestershire, told a Wagner operative he met on Telegram that he was keen to carry out ‘missions’ beginning with the arson attack.
MI5 director Ken McCallum has warned in a speech of Russian agents or proxies being ‘on a sustained mission to generate mayhem’ in Britain, including ‘arson, sabotage and more.’
‘They are having to reach using remote channels like Telegram because they are having a hard time doing it in person,’ Mr Riehle said of the Kremlin’s spooks.
‘There are people who can be reached but the downside is that Russia doesn’t really know who it’s dealing with.
‘They can do research but they don’t have the same vetting process on a forum as they would in a face-to-face meeting.
‘Frankly, if I were working in counter-intelligence I would be flooding those channels with people I control. The opportunity for double agents in that system is very high.’
‘Zero chance of justice’
The Sturgess Inquiry’s chair, Lord Hughes, published his final report at midday, four years after it was set up. While the Kremlin’s activities have been exposed much as they were in the murder of Alexander Litvinenko, Mr Riehle is emphatic about the chances of justice.
‘There’s zero chance,’ he said. ‘The people who carried that out are Russian military intelligence officers, and they are not going to be extradited.
‘Sending a message that we know who you are and recognise the absolutely egregious operation you ran is good, but we’ll never see them again. It’s a message more than it is a legal indictment.’
‘Destabilisation’
Mr Riehle views the Skripal operation as a ‘revenge hit’ that was outside Russia’s more formalised strategy for targeting opponents overseas.
‘My view is that Russia seldom conducts assassinations as a formal intelligence mission. Litvinenko and Skripal and a few others abroad were clearly supported by the intelligence services, but political assassinations outside Russia are rare. They are hard to do, they take a lot of work, but with Litvinenko and Skripal it was a different story.
‘Why them? Because they are traitors as in Russia’s eyes, those were revenge hits of people who directly acted against their fellow officers.
‘But of the other Russian people who have died in questionable circumstances, it is not unusual for them to have had multiple enemies, not just the Russian government, and they may have been involved in criminal things, including with Russian criminal groups.’
Mr Litvinenko’s widow, Marina, marked the 19th anniversary of his death on November 23 and expressed her thanks to the British people for the support they have shown her in the years since the killing.
She told Metro: ‘Starting in 2010, the coalition and then Conservative governments tried to rebuild a relationship with Russia.
‘It only gave Putin and his agents a stronger platform to carry out their activities in the UK. Now there is a situation where there are agents who are not trained, such as in the GRU or FSB, but whose minds have been poisoned by propaganda or who might have been hired for money.
‘They might even be British citizens. This is part of a cyber war against British society, it is all about destabilisation.’
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