LONDON: Russia’s intelligence service has been intent on causing “mayhem” in the UK because of London’s support for Ukraine, the chief of Britain’s domestic intelligence service said on Tuesday.

Ken McCallum also said MI5 had responded to 20 Iran-backed plots since Jan 2022 that presented potentially lethal threats to British citizens and UK residents.

Russia and Iran had turned to employing criminals and private intelligence officers to do their work on British soil, he said. From Russia, Britain should “expect to see continued acts of aggression here at home” with its military intelligence agency the GRU on “sustained missions to generate mayhem” on the country’s streets, McCallum said. “We’ve seen arson, sabotage and more,” he added.

On Iran, he said there had been an “unprecedented pace and scale” of plots over the past two years. As events unfold in the Middle East, MI5 was giving its “fullest attention” to the risk of a rise in Iranian-state backed aggression in the UK, he added.

Overall, MI5 and the police have disrupted 43 late-stage attack plots since March 2017, saving “numerous lives”, he said, adding: “Some of those plotters were trying to get hold of firearms and explosives, in the final days of planning mass murder.”

Published in Dawn, October 9th, 2024