‘A big problem’: Russia ‘at war’ with UK, says former British spy – who was left wedding rings ‘threat’
Russia’s leaders believe they are “at war” with the UK and its allies but Britain is failing to deter the threat, a former spy who wrote an infamous dossier on Donald Trump has said.
Christopher Steele, 57, said he even suspected Russian agents may have left him a “calling card”.
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Former British spy warns about Russia
The wedding rings left as a threat
He said intruders put two wedding rings in his wife’s washbag while they were on a Caribbean holiday about 18 months after his name emerged as the author of the dossier.
Asked what message he thought they were sending, the former MI6 officer said: “We know where you are. We can get to you. Don’t think you’ll be able to hide from us.”
In his first British television interview since his dossier – alleging collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign in the 2016 US election – triggered a political earthquake in the United States, Mr Steele also claimed:
• He had evidence of Russian hostilities against Britain, including during the Brexit referendum
• Moscow thinks it could possibly collapse the European Union
• His wife’s career as a crown servant at the Foreign Office suffered in the fallout from the dossier, with her deciding to retire early
Steele has made a series of serious claims in an exclusive Sky News interview
Mr Steele – once MI6’s top Kremlin expert, whose advice was sought by UK officials long after he left the service – warned that Russian hostility is growing.
“There are serious people at the top of Russia who regard themselves at war with us,” he said, speaking in the library at Farnham Castle in his hometown.
“The fact that our politicians neither want to recognise or deal with that is a big problem.”
But Lord Mark Sedwill, the UK’s national security adviser until last year, said he thought political leaders do recognise the Russia threat – one that he said is “diversifying”.
“Every senior politician I’ve dealt with… takes any threat of this kind really serious, they take national security seriously,” he said.
“They worry about the impact on the democratic process. They are right to do so.”
President Putin‘s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, declined to comment on any allegations. The Kremlin has in the past denied all claims of election meddling and other hostile action.
Christopher Steele was interviewed by Deborah Haynes at Farnham Castle
Mr Steele left the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), better known as MI6, in 2009, after a more than 20-year career.
He set up a private intelligence company called Orbis Business Intelligence in Farnham with a fellow former spy, Christopher Burrows, 63.
In June 2016, they were hired – ultimately by a law firm representing Democrats – to look into possible links between the Trump campaign and Russia.
Over the next few months, Mr Steele compiled a series of unverified reports, which included claims of collusion and that Moscow held compromising video tape of Mr Trump.
A news website published the so-called dossier in January 2017, drawing furious denials from the then president-elect and forcing Mr Steele and his family into hiding.
The Steeles on holiday in the Caribbean
Mr Steele claimed the fallout from the furore “profoundly affected” the career of his wife, Katherine, who at the time was a crown servant at the Foreign Office.
“Basically that didn’t play out at all well,” he said.
“She decided at a certain point that, yes, she would have to take early retirement, which is what she did.”
Asked how he felt, Mr Steele said: “Pretty angry and disappointed – as she does.”
A Foreign, Commonwealth and Development spokesperson said: “The UK government has been clear that it had no involvement in the production of the dossier.
“We do not comment on individual staffing matters.”
Mr Trump has dismissed the Russia dossier as a “hoax”, denied colluding with Moscow and denounced as false the sex tape claims. He has also derided Mr Steele as a “failed spy”.
Liz Harrington, the former president’s spokeswoman, said: “It was all a lie to try to discredit our movement which is more powerful today than it has ever been.”
Mr Steele said the Trump project was only a fraction of the work Orbis has done and is still doing on Russia.
Orbis Business Intelligence in Central London
In the run-up to the Brexit vote in 2016, he said he had been investigating the impact of suspected Russian interference in European countries.
Asked if he ever uncovered evidence of hostile operations against Britain, he said: “Yes”.
He said he would be looking at a range of different things.
“Everything from corrupt leadership money being brought onshore and invested in strategic industries and the like, which is something of concern, to potential attempts to fund parts of the Brexit campaign and interference in that, [the] Scottish referendum, some evidence of interference in that as well,” he said.
“That I regard as hostile behaviour, and certainly we came across that from time to time.”
Pressed on what sort of evidence he had, Mr Steele said: “I don’t have it to hand, but clearly some of the same playbook that we saw – so money being moved through deniable channels and coming out the other end, technically legal. There was a whole load of loopholes.”
Mr Steele also alleged that Russia posed a risk to wider European Union unity.
“I think they think they could possibly collapse the EU.”
A young women’s rights activist from Afghanistan recently left the country and travelled to Iran.
Women in both countries have few rights – but the activist told Sky News that when she arrived she saw a massive difference between the two places.
That was until Iranian women revealed how they suffered under the Islamic Republic’s regime.
We are keeping the activist anonymous to protect her safety. This is her story:
Almost three years of living in Afghanistan under the Taliban regime has systemically erased me and my fellow Afghan women from public life.
During this time, I struggled with deep depression and mental health crises, like countless women in the country.
There was no hope my situation would improve so my brother urged me to go travelling with him.
For most of people in Afghanistan, there are two countries we can travel to – Pakistan and Iran.
But because I’m a women’s rights activist and there has been a women’s revolution in Iran after the death of Mahsa Amini, I chose to go to Iran.
Mahsa Amini. Pic: Reuters
In the first days of our arrival, I could see women everywhere – in the streets, schools, universities, parks, restaurants – free to wear and do what they want at any time.
One day, I went to a beauty salon in the Mashhad area of Iran.
When I entered, there was a woman who just entered the salon before me. She was crying and all the women in the salon were welcoming her with tears and open hugs.
Keep up with all the latest news from the UK and around the world by following Sky News
Waiting for my turn, I got more information about Sapideh. She was a well-known client of the salon for years.
She had lost her father recently – her only parent – and had been at home overcoming her grief and loss. It sounded like she didn’t have any other family or friends to support her in this difficult time.
The ladies in the beauty salon listened to her words and cries and everyone did their best to comfort her.
When I was leaving, I could see that three women were working on her face, hair, and nails. She had stopped crying.
Iranian women on a street in Tehran as new hijab surveillance was implemented last year. Pic: Reuters
In Afghanistan, beauty salons – the small spaces that allow women to help and support each other – are all closed.
On my way to the hotel, I saw women driving, or women without hijab who were free – and my mind could only think of Afghan women.
Because we are used to it, we don’t know that our rights and our freedoms have been stolen from us.
The Taliban have dramatically curtailed the rights of women and girls since they regained power. Pic: AP
During those first days, I was constantly comparing our situation with Iranian women – I couldn’t find any similarity between our struggles, even though both countries can be described as having gender apartheid regimes.
In Afghanistan, women are fighting for basic human rights that we are denied, but Iranian women already appear to have them all.
Women in Afghanistan. Pic: Reuters
Iranian women are suffering but I wasn’t able to see that as I am one of the millions of Afghan women who are subject to suffering, oppression, and pain.
Meeting Tranom, a young Iranian teenager, in the bathroom of a shopping mall, changed my mind.
Tranom, who was 16, had short purple hair, no hijab, and was wearing a T-shirt and jeans. She told me that when she had a proper hijab, she had been arrested three times.
“It was too bad for a woman to be arrested in my society but now I’m not scared anymore. I wear what I want,” she said.
A young women films during a protest in Iran in October 2022
When I was in Tehran, I met Zari, a construction engineering student.
We discussed my first impressions of Iran. Zari said that the regime is mostly targeting the young generation of Iranians.
Areas that have more young people also have more trouble and tensions.
“You might have not seen the vans of Gasht-a Ershad, the Iranian morality police, in other areas but you can see one of them in [the] neighbourhood where the university is located and the parks where female and male students go,” said Zari.
Young Iranian women, especially students, are oppressed every day under the pretext that their hijab is not worn correctly, I learned from Zari.
Read more:
Women snatched from Iranian streets
Afghan families ‘let down’ by UK government
Underground protesters waging war against Iranian regime
When I travelled with my brother to Kish Island, in southern Iran, I met Fatima, a teacher who was there with her daughter and husband.
She spoke about a deep mental health crisis and depression among Iranian women.
A couple watch swimmers on Kish Island. Pic: Reuters
While we were sitting on the beach of the Persian Gulf, she asked me to watch each woman who was passing in front of us.
She told me that Kish Island is one of the most expensive places in the country – many Iranians dream of visiting. The people here are the wealthy of Iran, she says.
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Meet the women living in a warzone
“When you are looking at women, you see they wear expensive clothes and they have plastic surgery and sometimes heavy make-up,” said Fatima.
“But none of them are happy because they have been oppressed by the regime. Because they are not free.”
“The fear from the morality police [is that they] never leave them alone. They all are aware of countless young women who have been arrested under the hijab pretext, and they have been raped, tortured, killed and disappeared. We all are alive but we are not living.”
Gender apartheid must be codified as a crime against humanity – let all Afghan and Iranian women live free.
Russia has denied allegations of breaching the international chemical weapons ban by deploying chocking agents against Ukrainian troops.
The Kremlin on Thursday responded to claims by the United States that it had used choking agent chloropicrin against Ukrainian troops – the same agent used by German forces against Allied troops during the First World War.
The United States also accused Russia of using riot control agents “as a method of warfare” in Ukraine, which according to Ukrainian military cited by Reuters earlier this month, is being increasingly used in the country.
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Grenades containing CS and CN gases have also reportedly been used on the frontline, forcing troops stuck in trenches to either flee under enemy fire or risk suffocating.
At least 500 Ukrainian troops have been treated for exposure to a toxic substance, the military said, with one dying as a result of suffocating on tear gas.
The US State Department believes Russia has been violating international rules on chemical weapons under the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC).
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Moscow remained bound by its obligations under the treaty.
“The use of such chemicals is not an isolated incident and is probably driven by Russian forces’ desire to dislodge Ukrainian forces from fortified positions and achieve tactical gains on the battlefield,” the US State Department said in a statement.
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Chloropicrin is listed as a banned choking agent by the Hague-based Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, which was created to implement and monitor compliance with the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention.
According to the US, Moscow’s use of the gas “comes from the same playbook as its operations to poison” the late opposition leader Alexei Navalny in 2020 and Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury in 2018 with the Novichok nerve agent.
Russia denied involvement in both cases.
The murder trial of a former senior politician in Kazakhstan who has been accused of beating his wife to death has attracted the attention of the nation, sparking calls for new legislation tackling domestic violence.
Shocking footage showing businessman Kuandyk Bishimbayev, Kazakhstan’s former economy minister, beating his wife at a family restaurant has been streamed online from the court.
The case has touched a nerve among the public as tens of thousands of people have signed petitions calling for new laws to hold those guilty of abuse to account.
Disturbing CCTV footage shows the former senior politician hitting his wife
Why is the case so high profile?
The trial of Bishimbayev, 44, is the first in the country to ever be streamed online – making it readily accessible to the 19 million people in Kazakhstan.
The former politician was already well known, having been jailed for bribery in 2018. He spent less than two years of his 10-year sentence in prison before he was pardoned.
Bishimbayev admitted last month in court that he had beaten his wife. Pic: Kazakhstan Supreme Court Press Office/Telegram/AP
Bishimbayev was charged with torturing and killing his wife after her death last November. For weeks, he maintained his innocence but admitted last month in court that he had beaten her and “unintentionally” caused her death.
Saltanat Nukenova, 31, was found dead in November in a restaurant owned by one of her husband’s relatives.
Disturbing CCTV footage shows the defendant, a father of four, dragging his wife by her hair, and then punching and kicking her.
Hours after it was recorded, she died of brain trauma.
Bishimbayev was jailed for bribery in 2018. Pic: Kazakhstan Supreme Court Press Office/Telegram/AP
Bishimbayev’s lawyers initially disputed medical evidence indicating Ms Nukenova died from repeated blows to the head.
They also portrayed her as prone to jealousy and violence, although no video from the restaurant’s security cameras that was played in court has shown her attacking Bishimbayev.
According to a 2018 study backed by UN Women, about 400 women die as a result of domestic violence in Kazakhstan every year, although many go unreported.
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What reaction has the trial caused?
Tens of thousands of people in the country have signed a petition calling for harsher measures against perpetrators of domestic violence in the wake of Ms Nukenova’s tragic death.
The signatures resulted in senators approving a bill which toughens spousal abuse laws last month – dubbed “Saltanat’s Law”.
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Aitbek Amangeldy, Ms Nukenova’s brother and a key prosecution witness, told the Associated Press he had no doubt his sister’s tragic fate has shifted attitudes about domestic violence.
“It changes people’s minds when they see directly what it looks like when a person is tortured.”
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