{"id":633280,"date":"2025-12-15T05:05:13","date_gmt":"2025-12-15T05:05:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/633280\/"},"modified":"2025-12-15T05:05:13","modified_gmt":"2025-12-15T05:05:13","slug":"the-frontline-is-everywhere-new-mi6-head-to-warn-of-growing-russian-threat-mi6","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/633280\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018The frontline is everywhere\u2019: new MI6 head to warn of growing Russian threat | MI6"},"content":{"rendered":"

Assassination plots, sabotage, cyber-attacks and the manipulation of information by Russia<\/a> and other hostile states mean that \u201cthe frontline is everywhere\u201d, the new head of MI6 will warn on Monday.<\/p>\n

Blaise Metreweli, giving her first speech in the job, is expected to say the UK faces a new \u201cage of uncertainty\u201d where the rules of conflict are being rewritten, particularly in light of wider Kremlin aggression after the invasion of Ukraine.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe export of chaos is a feature, not a bug, in the Russian approach to international engagement,\u201d the agency\u2019s first female chief will argue, and \u201cuntil Putin is forced to change his calculus\u201d it is expected to continue.<\/p>\n

Similar comments about the scale of the threat, particularly from Russia, are expected to be made by Air Chief Marshal Richard Knighton, the chief of the defence staff, who is due to say in a separate speech that \u201cthe situation is more dangerous than I have known during my career\u201d and call for the country as a whole to be \u201cstepping up\u201d.<\/p>\n

Their pre-released remarks come as Keir Starmer is due to fly to Berlin for an emergency summit with European leaders, including Ukraine\u2019s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, as well as Donald Trump\u2019s special envoy Steve Witkoff in an effort to persuade the US to accept an alternative European peace plan for Ukraine.<\/p>\n

Russia is identified as an acute threat by Metreweli in her speech, due to be released in full on Monday afternoon, with an \u201caggressive, expansionist, and revisionist\u201d mindset that has led to Vladimir Putin<\/a> ordering the invasion of its neighbour, and deploying aggressive supporting tactics across Europe.<\/p>\n

\u201cPutin should be in no doubt: our support is enduring. The pressure we apply on Ukraine\u2019s behalf will be sustained,\u201d the spy chief is expected to say, though the diplomatic reality of the past month is that the US position is uncertain, with Trump and Witkoff previously favouring Russian demands.<\/p>\n

Threats faced by the UK include the attempt to kill Sergei and Yulia Skripal in Salisbury in 2018 with a nerve toxin, which led to the death of the British woman Dawn Sturgess. A public inquiry into the death of Sturgess, who accidentally picked up the poison bottle, concluded this month that the Russian president was \u201cmorally responsible\u201d<\/a>.<\/p>\n

They also include Russian efforts to use artificial intelligence to create disinformation on a vast scale, to create online videos aimed at undermining public support for Ukraine or spreading false rumours about the health of the Princess of Wales, as highlighted in a recent speech by the foreign secretary, Yvette Cooper<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Six Bulgarians living in the UK were jailed in May<\/a> for their part in a spy plot, which included the hostile surveillance of an investigative journalist known for Kremlin expos\u00e9s across Europe and an attempt to retrieve the phone numbers of Ukrainian soldiers thought to be training in Germany.<\/p>\n

However, in the advance excerpts, there was no explicit mention of China, other than to refer to last week\u2019s sanctioning of two companies based in the country accused of engaging in indiscriminate hacking against the UK and its allies.<\/p>\n

Ministers are still grappling with whether to allow China to build a new super-embassy<\/a> at Royal Mint Court in London, while the prime minister is hoping to visit Beijing in January before Trump goes there in April.<\/p>\n

Knighton, the country\u2019s top military officer since September, is also expected to emphasise the threat from Russia to both the UK and the Nato military alliance, in his first annual lecture at the Royal United Services Institute thinktank.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe war in Ukraine shows Putin\u2019s willingness to target neighbouring states, including their civilian populations,\u201d he is expected to say, arguing that Moscow wants to \u201cchallenge, limit, divide and ultimately destroy Nato\u201d.<\/p>\n

He will argue the long-term success of the armed forces relies on reconnecting with society so that defence becomes \u201ca higher national priority for all of us\u201d, with more Britons becoming involved.<\/p>\n

Metreweli took over from Richard Moore as the chief of MI6<\/a>, or C, in October. Previously she was MI6\u2019s head of its technology and innovation department, or Q, and spent most of her career in the Middle East and Europe.<\/p>\n

The new leader will also emphasise that the international spy agency has to remain on top of trends in computing, traditionally the domain of its sister agency GCHQ, as well as maintain the effective use of human sources of intelligence, its traditional trade.<\/p>\n

\u201cMastery of technology must infuse everything we do. Not just in our labs, but in the field, in our tradecraft, and even more importantly, in the mindset of every officer. We must be as comfortable with lines of code as we are with human sources, as fluent in Python as we are in multiple languages,\u201d she is expected to say.<\/p>\n

The pre-released excerpts highlighted more general reference to the moral dimension of high-tech power, though allies said this was not a coded criticism of Donald Trump\u2019s White House, but rather a call for a whole of society approach to technological development.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe defining challenge of the 21st century is not simply who wields the most powerful technologies, but who guides them with the greatest wisdom. Our security, our prosperity, and our humanity depend on it,\u201d the new chief will say.<\/p>\n

The spy chief is expected to say that \u201cwe all have choices to make ahead\u201d and that \u201cit will be our rediscovery of our shared humanity, our ability to listen, and our courage that will determine how our future unfolds\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Assassination plots, sabotage, cyber-attacks and the manipulation of information by Russia and other hostile states mean that \u201cthe…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":633281,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[748,393,4884,12,1144,712,16,15,1764],"class_list":{"0":"post-633280","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-england","10":"tag-great-britain","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-northern-ireland","13":"tag-scotland","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom","16":"tag-wales"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115721845105309780","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/633280","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=633280"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/633280\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/633281"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=633280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=633280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=633280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}