Ex-MI5 chief warns the UK may already be at war with Russia

The former head of MI5 has weighed in on claims that the UK is 'already at war' with Russia - and has warned that this hypothesis 'may be right'.

Baroness Manningham-Buller reckons that the Kremlin might have been orchestrating a myriad of clandestine attacks on British soil which have largely flown under the radar.

To the untrained eye, the torrent of cyber attacks and rising reports of espionage in the UK over the last 12 months might appear to be isolated incidents.

But intelligence chiefs believe there could be a sinister connection between the spate of bizarre events and the threat of Russia waging war.

Concerns were first raised in June this year by UK defence advisor and foreign affairs specialist Dr Fiona Hill.

She suggested that 'the poisonings, assassinations, sabotage operations, all kinds of cyber attacks and influence operations' which have taken place led her to the conclusion that 'Russia is at war with us'.

Baroness Manningham-Buller, pictured in 2012, reckons Dr Hill is on the right lines about Russia (BEN STANSALL/AFP/GettyImages)

Baroness Manningham-Buller has now thrown her weight behind Dr Hill's comments, explaining that she trusts her judgement as the foreign advisor 'probably knows more about [Vladimir] Putin than anybody else'.

During a recent appearance on the Lord Speaker’s Corner podcast, the ex-MI5 chief - who has 34 years of service under her belt - said: "Since the invasion of Ukraine, and the various things I read that the Russians have been doing here - sabotage, intelligence collection, attacking people, and so on... Fiona Hill may be right in saying we're already at war with Russia.

"It's a different sort of war, but the hostility, the cyber attacks, the physical attacks, intelligence work, is extensive."

Baroness Manningham-Buller - who led the UK's Security Service from 2002 to 2007 - said Putin has got an axe to grind with the West in the wake of the global response to his invasion of Ukraine.

She went on to recall how she met the Russian president shortly after the G8 meeting took place in Gleneagles, Scotland, two decades ago - and how UK figures had hoped they could mend fences with Putin.

The retired intelligence officer, 77, told the podcast: "We all hoped that the past history of Russia wouldn't prevail, and, at the end of the Soviet Union, we would have a potential partner.

The former head of MI5 warned that Putin might have been waging a 'different sort of war' on the UK (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

"And that was one of the reasons why Putin was with us for the G8 in 2005."

"I met him when he came back to London," Baroness Manningham-Buller added. "But actually, we were wrong in that, because Russia is extremely hostile to the West, and we've seen it in all sorts of ways.

"I didn't anticipate that within a year, he'd be ordering the murder on London streets of [Alexander] Litvinenko."

Litvinenko, a former FSB officer turned prominent critic of Putin, died in 2006 after he was poisoned with radioactive polonium-210 in London.

A 2016 inquiry concluded that Litvinenko was killed by Russians Dmitry Kovtun and Andrei Lugovoi, who are believed to have slipped the substance into his drink at a hotel in the UK capital.

The inquiry found that the poisoning was ‘probably’ carried out at the behest of the Russian president.

Sir Robert Owen, who headed the inquiry, said that the substance used to kill Litvinenko - which could have only come out of a nuclear reactor - was a ‘strong indicator’ of state involvement in the death.