MOSCOW (Sputnik) — Russia poses a growing threat to the United Kingdom in the attempts to expand its influence abroad by using all kinds of tools, the head of the MI5 security service said.
"It [Russia] is using its whole range of state organs and powers to push its foreign policy abroad in increasingly aggressive ways – involving propaganda, espionage, subversion and cyber-attacks. Russia is at work across Europe and in the UK today. It is MI5’s job to get in the way of that," Andrew Parker told The Guardian in an interview published on Tuesday.
Parker noted that numerous Russia's intelligence officers were still operating in the United Kingdom in order to obtain information about state military, industrial and government secrets.
Since 2014, relations between Russia and the West, including the United Kingdom, have deteriorated amid the crisis in Ukraine. The United States, the European Union and some of their allies have introduced several rounds of anti-Russia sanctions after Crimea's reunification with Russia and Moscow's alleged involvement in the Ukrainian conflict.
UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson also threatened Russia and Syria with more sanctions in October after fighting escalated in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo.
