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The head of MI5 has warned that the Russian intelligence agency is on a mission to create "sustainable chaos on British and European streets".
Giving his annual update on the security threats facing the UK, Ken McCallum said GRU agents had carried out arson, sabotage and more dangerous acts in Britain since the UK supported Ukraine in its war with Russia .
According to him, MI5 had also responded to 20 Iranian-backed plots since 2022, although he added that most of its work still mainly involved Islamist extremism followed by far-right terrorism.
Taken together, MI5's number of state investigations into China, Russia, Iran and others rose by 48% last year. Russian activity had picked up again after a chaotic period following the invasion of Ukraine, when 750 diplomats were expelled across Europe.
"Young people are increasingly drawn to online extremism, with 13% of those investigated for involvement in terrorism aged under 18. A total of 43 late-stage plots involving firearms and explosives to carry out "mass murder" in the UK had been foiled since 2017.
The number of state threat investigations by MI5 had increased by 48%. Counter-terrorism work remained split between "75% Islamic extremism, 25% far-right terrorism." There was a "bewildering range of beliefs and ideologies" that MI5 had to deal with, he told the briefing at MI5's counter-terrorism operations center in London.
The first 20 years of my career here were filled with terrorist threats. We now face them along with state-sponsored assassination and sabotage plots against the backdrop of a major European land war ," he said.
The number of terrorist plots in the final stages disrupted since March 2017 had risen to 43, McCallum said. The last time the spy chief gave a comparable figure was 37 in November 2022, which means six plots have been prevented in almost two years. / Taken from "BBC"
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