No ‘absolute guarantees’ Kremlin won’t carry out another Salisbury-style attack, says MI5

‘Our understanding of the wide range of people in the UK who might be under threat … has improved’

A joint ‘Russia Mission’ has been set up by MI5, MI6 and GCHQ in an attampt to prevent another attack such as was seen in Salisbury in July 2018 (AFP/Getty)

The Kremlin is taking an “active interest” in Russian opposition figures in exile in this country and there are no “absolute guarantees” that another Salisbury type attack would not be attempted, according to MI5 officers.

Security measures have been put in place to protect the possible “at risk” targets as Moscow, it is claimed, tries to rebuild its spy network in the UK after the expulsions of diplomatic and intelligence staff following the Novichok poisoning.

MI5, MI6 and GCHQ have pooled resources to set up a joint “Russia Mission” to assess and counter the threat which is “evolving and diversifying”, said a Security Service officer. This includes monitoring activities of Russian nationals who are not officially connected to the country’s embassy. but are thought to be collecting information for the Russian government.  

One officer told Sky News’s Into the Grey Zone podcast “we’ve been able to devote more resources to looking at people who might not be associated with the embassy. People who might be here either permanently or visitors under business cover, or as journalists or academics, or tourists or others who might want to come into the UK.” 

Working with other security agencies and the police is vital to protect opposition figures from abroad in the UK who may be targeted like Sergei Skripal who was poisoned along with his daughter Yulia, said the MI5 officer.

“Our understanding of the wide range of people in the UK who might be under threat … has improved,” he added. “We know more about who those people are. We’ve evolved a much more detailed process to help us manage the threat to those people and provide advice, guidance and other mitigations to the threat they may face.” 

The officer continued: “We know that the Russian state continues to take an interest in people here who we deem to be at risk. And that’s not a passive interest. It’s quite an active interest. So we think that they are probably still trying to collect information about people. To what end? It’s not immediately apparent, but we’re not going to take any risks of finding out that the intelligence that they’ve been collecting has been towards some kind of physical attack. We will continue to push back and call that out where we see it.” 

Speaking of the possibility of another attempt on lives such as that of the Skripals, the officer responded: “We do absolutely everything we can to stop any events from taking place in the UK which are damaging the UK population or property: but there are no absolute guarantees,” he stressed, that such an attack will not take place again. 

He pointed to how easily the Novichok was brought into the country: “It’s about the size of a small pack of cards, about half as thick, maybe about the length of my finger. It’s a sort of pink metallic box and when you open the box there is a much smaller bottle about three inches long with a small amount of yellowy liquid in it and a long nozzle applicator in it, which was presumably there to protect the assailants when they were deploying the Novichok.

“It’s a really powerful demonstration of just how easy it was just to slip this into the UK and how reckless the attack in Salisbury was, given it presumably came in someone’s pocket.”