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„On Thursday 23 October, three men aged 48, 45 and 44, of unspecified nationality, were arrested at addresses in west and central London and searches are ongoing at both these addresses as well as another address in London. All three men were formally arrested on suspicion of assisting a foreign intelligence service, contrary to section 3 of the National Security Act (NSA), 2023 and they are currently being detained under arrest at a Police station”.
In a statement released on 23/10/2025 by the Metropolitan Police in London, three people have been detained as part of an ongoing investigation into alleged spying offences under the National Security Act, which is being led by detectives from Counter Terrorism Policing -London. The statement continued by pointing the finger at Russia as the likely foreign power involved in the recruitment of the suspects. Commander Dominic Murphy, Head of Counter Terrorism Policing in London, said: ”We’re seeing an increasing number of those who we would describe as »proxies,« being recruited by foreign intelligence services and these arrests are directly related to our ongoing efforts to disrupt this type of activity”.
Unconnected to these arrests, the following day (24/10/2025) saw the sentencing of two ringleaders, one of them a convicted a drug dealer, of a group of saboteurs who had been recruited online by the Wagner Group on Telegram, to carry out sabotage and kidnapping at the behest of the Russian Intelligence services. These individuals committed their crimes in 2024 and these included the burning down of a Ukrainian warehouse storing Starlink equipment destined for the Ukrainian Army and planning to conduct the kidnapping of a dissident London based Russian wine bar owner. Their only motive appeared to be greed as they were teenagers who had been recruited via the world of online gaming. This also gave an insight into the way in which Russian Intelligence will manipulate, exploit and target an individual’s vulnerabilities for recruitment, which is of course very much their traditionalmodus operandi.
The head of MI5 updates on the internal and external threats to the United Kingdom
All this follows on from the 16/10/2025 annual speech on the state of security in the United Kingdom by Sir Ken McCallum, the Head of the Security Service MI5. His central theme was to officially warn that Moscow is using external proxies to „sow the seeds of violence, chaos and division” in Britain as part of its campaign of political subversion and disruption. Since the mass reduction of the Russian Diplomatic presence in London which followed the Salisbury poisonings in 2018, the Kremlin has been forced to resort to the use of proxies and criminals, who lacking both the experience and expertise of trained intelligence officers, have forced the Russians into revealing the level of their desperation for recruiting active UK assets for sabotage operations.
Nonetheless despite the reduction in the level of the quality of agents, Sir Ken revealed there has been a 35 per cent increase in the number of individuals who MI5 have been investigating in the past year. He finished his speech with a stern warning to those tempted by the allure of Russian collaboration for financial or other benefit by reminding them that in the end they are part of deniable operations and will be left to face the consequences without any support or official recognition in future „spy swaps”. Equally he warned that they may fail to receive any promised financial reward as Russian Intelligence has no loyalty towards those that they make use of.
Why is the United Kingdom being targeted and why now?
Since the United Kingdom is at the forefront of the Coalition of the Willing to support Ukraine and as UK Forces are training the Ukrainian Army in Operation Interflex, Russia has an obvious strategic motivation to want to cause major disruption in any way it possibly can, especially since it has identified and declared the UK to be its „eternal enemy”. In their overall strategic manoeuvring, the Russians could be potentially capitalising on influencing certain social protest movements (ex. pro-Palestine, anti-imperialism, illegal migration) as well as by mobilising ideological allies within both the extreme left-wing as well as with extreme right-wing groups, all with the intention of disrupting the existing political order andstatus quo. None of this of course should be in any way surprising as it mirrors a common theme of Russian hybrid warfare operations across the whole of the Western world.
Is Russia the sole problem?
In addition to Russia, Sir Ken also signalled that China, Iran and North Korea were also actively operating to undermine the United Kingdom as well. A risk of aRussia-only focus is to potentially fail to see how other countries are also operating to the detriment of the UK. Indeed, some would argue that the actions carried out by China have a potentially much more influential and malign influence due to their having more subtlety established deep-rooted links in all levels of UK society and institutions. It could well be argued from a national and strategic security perspective that the threat they pose in the long term outweighs the more immediate, even if very valid concerns regarding Russia. This is demonstrated by the entire question of access to both the mining and processing of rare earth metals, the subtle infiltration of academic and research facilities critical to Western technological development and the economic dependence that raises concerns for the sovereignty of the UK economy.
What therefore is the UK doing to confront the continued threats of Hostile State Sabotage and Covert Operations?
In an excellent article by Tim Ripley from the 24/10/2025 in the UK defence portalDefence Eye-(Getting ready for Russian sabotage threat), it has been reported that an actual military and civilian exercise has already taken place during the summer, so as to prepare and enhance the capabilities of both the UK military and civilian police forces for confronting the reality of such continued domestic threats. The training exercise had as its aim the simulation of what would happen before a potential proxy sabotage attack on any feature of the UK Critical National Infrastructure. It happened against the backdrop of current geopolitical tensions that have grown in the wake of a spate of clear Russian provocations when drones overflew NATO territory in both Poland and Denmark, in which the Russians carried out probing operations under the cloak of „plausible deniability”- a familiar tactic in „hybrid warfare”.
According toDefence Eye, a wide-ranging summer exercise took place in Manchester called »Lightning Manc« which aimed at simulating and testing ways in which to impede the activities of potential „hostile state agents”. The main actors taking part were the elite Royal Marine Commandos of 45 Commando Regiment who were tasked with engaging with local Counter-Terrorist Policing units, who have the tactical lead in UK counter-espionage policing operations. During the exercise, the Commandos played the role of infiltrators and saboteurs, by operating in civilian clothes whilst surveying key locations of national critical infrastructure in Manchester, just as real life hostile actors would do.
According toDefence Eye, defence sources familiar with the exercise revealed that the Marines attempted to breach sensitive barriers, took surveillance photographs and flew „hobby drones” over potential objectives with the aim of infiltrating targets to leave behind explosive devices and undertake other actions that could potentially damage Critical National Infrastructure. Targets are reported to have included Manchester Airport and the city’s main Railway station, Manchester Piccadilly. The exercise was under the overall domain of Project Servator, which aims to assist police forces to train their officers to identify the potential indications that someone may be planning or preparing to carry out a hostile operation. Whilst elite units regularly train alongside their police counterparts, what is significant about this operation is that it is believed to be the first of its kind in preparing to confront the threat posed by the agents of foreign hostile states.
To sum up, hostile sabotage and subversion operations are all part of an overarching strategy that is essentially political in nature. The famous quote of von Clausewitz that war is „an extension of politics by other means”, now perhaps needs to take into consideration that in the modern reality of the hybrid warfare domain, politics itself becomes an „extension of war by other means”. The aim is to tap into and stir up deep societal tensions and resentments which are currently latent in certain sections of the UK population, so as to undermine confidence in both the credibility of the UK political system and the wider democratic system as a whole. The simple truth is that Western societies must understand and do so very quickly, that they are as much in the front-line of the current multi-domain conflict as indeed those who are affected by the direct kinetic effects of Russian aggression in Ukraine.
Thus, much like in the cyber domain, a conflict of sabotage and subversion can be waged in a seemingly low intensity manner which to all intents and purposes is perceived by most people as „out of sight and out of mind” and not directly involving them, however these actions will intensify until they will result in very „real-world” consequences that will have a very direct negative influence and impact on all our daily lives. The endgame of all these hostile-state operations is to instigate intentional societal disruption so as to bring about a deep feeling of insecurity and anxiety in the UK population and ultimately to seek to relegate the place of the United Kingdom in the new world order. The question to ask is this: What will it now take for the UK as well as Western Societies as a whole to adequately and resolutely confront this threat? Will the answer be words and slogans or actions and a realisation of the threat? Only time will tell.