A former head of MI5 has warned that Britain may already be at war with Vladimir Putin's Russia.
Baroness Manningham-Buller argued that Russian espionage, covert operations and cyberattacks suggests that Britain is "already at war with Russia".
The ex-MI5 chief said she shared the view of the foreign policy expert and former adviser to US President Donald Trump, Dr Fiona Hill, who has previously argued that the UK is effectively at war with Moscow.
Speaking to the Lord Speaker’s Corner podcast, Lady Manningham-Buller said: “Fiona Hill may be right in saying we’re already at war with Russia.
Baroness Manningham-Buller argued that Russian espionage, covert operations and cyberattacks suggests that Britain is 'already at war with Russia'
|GETTY
"It’s a different sort of war, but the hostility, the cyber attacks, the physical attacks, intelligence work is extensive.”
The former Security Service boss, who met with Mr Putin in 2005, said previous governments had made a mistake in trying to bring the country closer to the West.
Lady Manningham-Buller said: “We all hoped that at the end of the Soviet Union we would have a potential partner.
"That was one of the reasons why Putin was with us for the G8 summit in 2005.
The former Security Service boss said previous governments had made a mistake in trying to bring the country closer to the West
| GETTY“I met him when he came back to London. But actually we were wrong because Russia is extremely hostile to the West.
"I didn’t anticipate that within a year he’d be ordering the murder on London streets of Alexander Litvinenko.”
Mr Litvinenko served as an officer within the Russian Federal Security Services (FSB) and repeatedly called Mr Putin's regime a "mafia state", before defecting to advise Britain's intelligence service.
He died in November 2006 after being poisoned in London, with two Russian agents suspected of being ordered to carry out the assassination.
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Mr Litvinenko served as an officer within the Russian Federal Security Services (FSB) and repeatedly called Mr Putin's regime a 'mafia state'
|GETTY
Lady Manningham-Buller added that Dr Hill, who first raised the alarm that Britain may already be at war with Russia earlier this year, knows "more about Putin than anybody else”.
In an interview with The Guardian, Dr Hill said that Britain is in "pretty big trouble".
The former Trump adviser, who is a biographer of the Russian president, said that Britain was stuck between "the rock" of Mr Putin's regime and "the hard place" of the current American government.
In May, Britain's National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), alongside Western allies, exposed a campaign by Russian intelligence targeting logistics and technology organisations.
NCSC director of operations Paul Chichester said in May that the Russian military intelligence service was carrying out a "malicious campaign", which "presents a serious risk to targeted organisations, including those involved in the delivery of assistance to Ukraine".
The intelligence agencies of 10 Nato member states said Russian spies were able to gain access to the networks using a range of hacking techniques.
In 2018, former Russian intelligence officer Sergei Skripal and his daughter died after being poisoned with the deadly Novichok nerve agent in Salisbury, Wiltshire.
The Government concluded the attack was "highly likely" to have been carried out by agents acting on behalf of Russia.
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