MI6 chief says UK faces threat from Russia’s desire to export chaos
LONDON AP The new head of the MI spy agency is set to warn on Monday of how Russian President Vladimir Putin s determination to export chaos around the world is rewriting the rules of conflict and creating new measure challenges Blaise Metreweli will use her first citizens speech as chief of the United Kingdom s foreign intelligence amenity to say that Britain faces increasingly unpredictable and interconnected threats with emphasis on aggressive expansionist Russia The export of chaos is a feature not a bug in the Russian approach to international engagement and we should be ready for this to continue until Putin is forced to change his calculus she will say according to extracts disclosed by the Foreign Office which oversees MI The MI chief known as C is the only employee of the secretive agency whose name is made citizens Metreweli who took over from Richard Moore at the end of September was previously the MI director of machinery and innovation the real-world equivalent of the fictional James Bond gadget-master Q She plans to say that technological savvy and human intelligence are both key to combating hybrid threats and MI officers must be as relaxed with lines of code as we are with human sources as fluent in Python as we are in multiple languages The speech is the latest in a series of warnings by Western defense and safety officers about the growing hybrid threat from states such as Russia Iran and China whose use of cyber tools espionage and influence operations they say threatens global stability Last week the U K imposed sanctions on several Russian media outlets for alleged information warfare and two Chinese tech firms for vast and indiscriminate cyber-activities Metreweli is the first woman to hold the post since MI was founded in Britain s two other main intelligence agencies have already shattered the spy world s glass ceiling MI the domestic defense organization was led by Stella Rimington from to and Eliza Manningham-Buller between and Anne Keast-Butler became head of the electronic and cyberintelligence agency GCHQ in The spy chief s warning came amid a flurry of diplomatic meetings aimed at ending the almost four-year war sparked by Russia s invasion of its neighbor Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met U S envoys on Sunday in Berlin and will meet later with the leaders of Germany France and Britain Kyiv s allies are trying to bolster aid for Ukraine amid Washington s pressure to swiftly accept a U S -brokered peace deal In a separate speech the head of the British military Air Chief Marshal Richard Knighton will say Monday that Putin s aim is to challenge limit divide and ultimately destroy NATO The war in Ukraine shows Putin s willingness to target neighboring states including their civilian populations threatens the whole of NATO including the U K Knighton plans to say arguing that Britain requirements both a stronger military and more resilient infrastructure to meet the evolving threat Source
