VLADIMIR Putin’s military intelligence agency is recruiting far-right extremists to carry out terror attacks in the UK, sources say.
A spate of attacks in Western Europe in the past six months were reportedly executed by the Russia-drafted terrorists.
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Extremists are being recruited by undercover officers of Russia’s military intelligence agency, the GRU, and members of the Wagner Group to carry out attacks in Nato countries, says the Telegraph.
The terrorists are reportedly behind a spate of worrying attacks carried out across Western Europe and the US in the past six months.
An intelligence source told National Security News: “The GRU are cultivating a network of right-wing terrorists to deploy against Nato targets.
“These attacks are already happening and have been going on for a while in various Nato countries and the UK is definitely on the target list.
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“Attacks may have taken place in the US and have occurred in Germany.”
The source added: “Intelligence agencies are now actively warning their governments that the threat is very real.
“Right-wing extremists are being targeted because they are the group in the political spectrum who are pro-Russia, pro-Putin and very violent.
“There is also a lot of covert contact between right-wing groups in different countries.”
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The Kremlin’s alleged proxy terrorist attacks may be the result of the West piling pressure on Russia by supplying weapons to Ukraine, experts say.
Mark Galeotti, director of the think tank Mayak Intelligence, told the Telegraph: “As far as Putin is concerned, Ukraine does what it is told.
“When he sees Russian factories being attacked, he sees the hands of the CIA, of Nato.”
Putin, enraged by comments made by Lord Cameron about Ukraine using British military aid in its war with Russia, this month warned the UK via his puppet spokesman Dmitry Peskov that the sentiment could “imperil the entire system of European security architecture”.
Peskov said: “The Kremlin views Cameron’s statements about Kyiv’s right to use British weapons to strike the Russian Federation as a direct escalation.”
Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova added that Lord Cameron’s words were “further evidence of the hybrid war the West is waging against our country”.
She said: “Russia is responding to that and will continue to respond.”
A Brit “Russian spy” was last month charged with masterminding an arson attack on British soil in a plot allegedly led by the Wagner Group.
Dylan Earl, 20, was accused of planning and paying for an arson attack on a Ukrainian aid centre in London, with prosecutors alleging his aim was to target businesses linked to Ukraine to benefit Russia.
Court documents linked the young man to the mercenary group.
Prosecutor David Cawthorne said Earl had been “recruited online by those acting on behalf of Russia and the terrorist organisation the Wagner Group” to engage in “malign activity”.
The attack sparked a “significant fire” which Mr Cawthorne alleged was intended to send a message to the UK that assisting Ukraine will be met with punishment.
It comes as the UK is set to eject a Russian defence attache – Col Maxim Elovik, believed to be a GRU operative – for the first time since the end of the cold war.
Col Elovik is understood to have lived in the UK since at least 2014.
Thousands of British holiday flights are believed to have been hit by Russian jamming branded by aviation sources as “extremely dangerous” and a major threat to air safety.
Electronic attacks have rendered satellite navigation useless, leaving aircraft unsure of routes or where they are, and swerving and diving to avoid phantom obstacles.
Estonia’s second largest airport in Tartu has been forced to cancel all of its flights from the end of April until May 31 as Putin’s GPS jammers continue to wreak havoc on planes near Russia’s borders.
In Germany, the risk of Russian state-controlled “acts of sabotage” has “significantly increased”, according to the head of German domestic intelligence Thomas Haldenwang.
He told a security conference last month that any attacks would have “a high potential for damage”.
Almost two dozen Russian spies were expelled by the UK after the Salisbury poisonings in 2018, when Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were poisoned by means of a Novichok nerve agent in a botched attempt to kill Sergei, a former Russian military officer.
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Sergei – who was also a double agent for the British intelligence agencies – and Yulia spent several weeks in hospital in a critical condition before they were discharged.
A UK government spokesman said the UK defends against “the full spectrum of threats emanating from Russia”, along with its allies, as evidenced by its recent expulsion of the Russian defence attache.
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Source: Sun
