Britain’s MI6 spy chief says Putin is dragging out peace talks and wants to subjugate Ukraine

LONDON (AP) — President Vladimir Putin is stalling efforts to extremity Russia’s warfare connected Ukraine, and is investigating the West with tactics that autumn “just beneath the threshold of war,” the caput of Britain’s MI6 spy bureau said Monday.

Blaise Metreweli said Putin is “dragging retired negotiations” connected stopping the conflict, and remains determined to “subjugate Ukraine and harass NATO members.”

“We are present operating successful a abstraction betwixt bid and war,” Metreweli said successful her archetypal nationalist code since becoming main of Britain’s overseas quality bureau 2 months ago,

Russia accused of exporting chaos

Metreweli accused Moscow of sponsoring cyberattacks connected different countries’ captious infrastructure, drone incursions astir European airports, campaigns of arson, sabotage and disinformation, and “aggressive activities successful our seas, supra and beneath the waves.”

“The export of chaos is simply a feature, not a bug, successful this Russian attack to planetary engagement, and we should beryllium acceptable for this to proceed until Putin is forced to alteration his calculus,” she said.

Metreweli is the archetypal pistillate to caput the U.K.’s 116-year-old overseas quality service. She gave reporters a uncommon glimpse wrong MI6 office successful London, which she noted was “familiar to movie fans everywhere” from the James Bond spy thrillers.

Speaking wrong the spy chief’s wood-paneled eating country overlooking the River Thames, she said rapidly evolving exertion is rewriting the rules of conflict, portion hybrid threats from states and extremist groups mean “the beforehand enactment is everywhere.”

The code made a little notation to China’s “implications for nationalist security,” but Metreweli focused connected the menace from an “aggressive, expansionist and revisionist Russia.”

“Russia is investigating america successful the grey portion with tactics that are conscionable beneath the threshold of war,” she said.

Warning comes amid Ukraine bid talks

The informing came amid a flurry of diplomatic meetings aimed astatine ending the astir four-year warfare sparked by Russia’s penetration of its neighbor.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was successful Berlin Monday to conscionable U.S. envoys, and volition conscionable aboriginal with the leaders of Germany, France and Britain. Kyiv’s allies are trying to bolster enactment for Ukraine amid Washington’s unit to swiftly judge a U.S.-brokered bid deal.

The MI6 chief, known arsenic C, is the lone worker of the secretive bureau whose sanction is made public. In a code that, unusually, touched connected her idiosyncratic backstory, Metreweli said that coming “from a household shaped by devastating conflict, I grew up with a heavy consciousness of gratitude for the U.K.’s precious ideology and freedom.”

After Metreweli’s assignment was announced successful June, media reported that her grandfather, Constantine Dobrowolski, had been a Nazi spy successful Ukraine during World War II.

MI6 said Metreweli ne'er met her grandfather.

Spies indispensable maestro technology

Metreweli, who has astir 3 decades of clandestine work and a inheritance successful anthropology, science and AI, was antecedently the MI6 manager of exertion and innovation — the real-world equivalent of the fictional Bond gadget-master Q.

She said technological savvy and quality quality are some cardinal to combating “an interlocking web” of information threats, and MI6 officers “must beryllium arsenic comfy with lines of codification arsenic we are with quality sources, arsenic fluent successful Python arsenic we are successful aggregate languages.”

“Our satellite is much unsafe and contested present than it has been for decades,” she said, adding that “we are being contested from oversea to space, from the battlefield to the boardroom – and adjacent our brains, arsenic disinformation manipulates our knowing of each different and ourselves.

“The foundations of spot successful our societies are eroding. Information, erstwhile a unifying force, is progressively weaponized,” she added.

“We are present operating successful a abstraction betwixt bid and war,” Metreweli said

And successful a informing to Britain’s adversaries, she said MI6 volition “sharpen our borderline and impact” and “take calculated risks.”

“We volition ne'er stoop to the tactics of our opponents. But we indispensable question to outplay them,” she said.

A bid of information warnings

The code is the latest successful a bid of warnings by Western defence and information authorities astir the increasing hybrid menace from states specified arsenic Russia, Iran and to an grade China, whose usage of cyber tools, espionage and power operations they accidental threatens planetary stability.

Last week, the U.K. imposed sanctions connected respective Russian media outlets for alleged accusation warfare and 2 Chinese tech firms for “vast and indiscriminate cyberactivities.”

In a abstracted speech, the caput of the British military, Air Chief Marshal Richard Knighton, volition accidental Monday that Putin’s purpose is “to challenge, limit, disagreement and yet destruct NATO.”

“The warfare successful Ukraine shows Putin’s willingness to people neighboring states, including their civilian populations ... threatens the full of NATO, including the U.K.,” Knighton plans to say, arguing that Britain needs some a stronger subject and much resilient infrastructure to conscionable the evolving threat.

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