Britain on Friday slapped sanctions on the GRU Russian intelligence agency and 18 agents accused of “spreading chaos and disorder” on the orders of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“GRU spies are running a campaign to destabilise Europe, undermine Ukraine’s sovereignty and threaten the safety of British citizens,” Foreign Secretary David Lammy said in a statement
He added: “Putin’s hybrid threats and aggression will never break our resolve.”
The Foreign Office said the sanctions targeted three GRU units and the 18 individual intelligence officers for a “sustained campaign of malicious cyber activity over many years, including in the UK”.
“The GRU routinely uses cyber and information operations to sow chaos, division and disorder in Ukraine and across the world with devastating real-world consequences,” it said in a statement.
Some of those sanctioned included GRU officers who had targeted Yulia Skripal, daughter of former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal, with malicious malware.
She was targeted five years before a failed poison attack on her father in the southwestern UK city of Salisbury in March 2018.
Other cyber attacks had also involved targets on UK soil, it said.
“In the UK, Russia has targeted media outlets, telecoms providers, political and democratic institutions, and energy infrastructure,” the statement added.
The Foreign Office said the sanctions against one GRU unit punished online reconnaissance to help target missile strikes on the southern Ukrainian city of Mariupol, including a deadly attack on a theatre where civilians were hiding.
NATO said in a statement it recognised that countries including the UK, Estonia, France and the United States had recently “attributed malicious cyber activity” targeting the alliance’s allies and Ukraine to Russian intelligence.
“These attributions and the continuous targeting of our critical infrastructure, with the harmful impacts caused across several sectors, illustrate the extent to which cyber and wider hybrid threats have become important tools in Russia’s ongoing campaign to destabilise NATO Allies and in Russia’s brutal and unprovoked war of aggression against Ukraine,” it said.
“We call on Russia to stop its destabilising cyber and hybrid activities,” it added.
By Agencies
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