{"id":272578,"date":"2025-07-18T17:21:10","date_gmt":"2025-07-18T17:21:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/272578\/"},"modified":"2025-07-18T17:21:10","modified_gmt":"2025-07-18T17:21:10","slug":"uk-sanctions-russian-spies-for-malicious-cyber-activity-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/272578\/","title":{"rendered":"UK sanctions Russian spies for ‘malicious cyber activity’"},"content":{"rendered":"

The UK Foreign Office said one of the intelligence units it had sanctioned – Unit 26165 – had been involved in targeting Mariupol, including a strike that hit the Ukrainian city’s theatre, killing hundreds of civilians.<\/p>\n

It said it had also placed measures on intelligence officers who placed spyware on the phone of Yulia Skripal, who with her father was targeted by suspected Russian agents in Salisbury with the nerve agent Novichok.<\/p>\n

The Foreign Office added that Russia had targeted UK media organisations, telecoms companies, energy infrastructure and political institutions.<\/p>\n

“The Kremlin should be in no doubt: we see what they are trying to do in the shadows and we won’t tolerate it,” Lammy said in a statement, external<\/a>. “Putin’s hybrid threats and aggression will never break our resolve.”<\/p>\n

The BBC has contacted the Russian embassy for comment.<\/p>\n

People or entities that are sanctioned can face a range of restrictions, including having financial assets frozen.<\/p>\n

European leaders are also looking for the US to place further pressure on Russia.<\/p>\n

Earlier this week, Donald Trump threatened Russia with severe tariffs<\/a> if a peace deal was not reached within 50 days. The US president has become increasingly impatient with Putin. <\/p>\n

The Foreign Office also announced sanctions on three leaders of the “African Initiative”, a social media campaign it said was founded, funded and employed by Russia to conduct disinformation operations in West Africa.<\/p>\n

Russia has previously denied any involvement in efforts to interfere with countries’ democratic systems or of seeking to sabotage their economies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The UK Foreign Office said one of the intelligence units it had sanctioned – Unit 26165 – had…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":272579,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7654],"tags":[2000,299,657],"class_list":{"0":"post-272578","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ukraine","8":"tag-eu","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-ukraine"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114875393389505958","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272578","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=272578"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272578\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/272579"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=272578"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=272578"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=272578"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}