{"id":6468,"date":"2025-07-18T13:49:07","date_gmt":"2025-07-18T13:49:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/6468\/"},"modified":"2025-07-18T13:49:07","modified_gmt":"2025-07-18T13:49:07","slug":"uk-sanctions-senior-russian-intelligence-officers-over-cyberattacks-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/6468\/","title":{"rendered":"UK sanctions senior Russian intelligence officers over cyberattacks | News"},"content":{"rendered":"

The UK sanctions three units of the Russian military intelligence GRU agency and 18 of its officers.<\/p>\n

The United Kingdom says it has sanctioned more than 20 Russian spies, hackers and agencies over what it called a \u201csustained campaign of malicious cyber activity\u201d to destabilise Europe.<\/p>\n

The Foreign Office said on Friday it was sanctioning three units of the Russian military intelligence GRU agency and 18 of its officers.<\/p>\n

Those sanctioned include officers it said were involved in preparing the attack against Ukraine\u2019s Mariupol theatre<\/a> in the first month of the war in 2022, which killed hundreds of civilians of taking shelter inside the building.<\/p>\n

It also sanctioned those it accuses of involvement in targeting former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia, who were the victims of a nerve agent Novichok poisoning attack in 2018 <\/a>in the UK.<\/p>\n

\u201cGRU spies are running a campaign to destabilise Europe, undermine Ukraine\u2019s sovereignty and threaten the safety of British citizens,\u201d Foreign Secretary David Lammy said in a statement.<\/p>\n

The UK also said Russia had targeted media outlets, telecoms providers, political and democratic institutions, and energy infrastructure in the UK.<\/p>\n

British authorities have repeatedly accused Moscow of orchestrating malign activity, ranging from traditional espionage and actions to undermine democracy, to sabotage and assassinations.<\/p>\n

Russia denies claims<\/p>\n

Earlier this month, three men were convicted over an arson attack on a Ukrainian-linked business in London that police said was carried out at the behest of the Wagner mercenary group.<\/p>\n

Moscow has rejected such accusations, saying they were politically motivated and that it posed no threat to the UK.<\/p>\n

In addition to the sanctions aimed at GRU, the British foreign ministry said it was sanctioning three leaders of the \u201cAfrican Initiative,\u201d which it said was a Russian-funded social media content mill conducting information operations in West Africa.<\/p>\n

The UK has recently ramped up its military spending to help change its approach to defence, partly to address threats from Russia, nuclear risks and cyberattacks.<\/p>\n

The European Union and NATO also issued statements on Friday condemning what they described as Russia\u2019s destabilising hybrid activities.<\/p>\n

The UK move came on the same day the EU approved<\/a> a new host of stiff sanctions against Russia over its war in Ukraine.<\/p>\n

The EU sanctions package includes a lower oil price cap, a ban on transactions with Nord Stream gas pipelines, and the targeting of more shadow fleet ships.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The UK sanctions three units of the Russian military intelligence GRU agency and 18 of its officers. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6469,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[591,59,57,58,50,154,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-6468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-europe","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-russia","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6468","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6468"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6468\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6469"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}