Blaise Metreweli expected to say UK faces new ‘age of uncertainty’ in speech identifying Kremlin as key threat
Assassination plots, sabotage, cyber-attacks and the manipulation of information by Russia and other hostile states mean that “the frontline is everywhere”, the new head of MI6 will warn on Monday.
Blaise Metreweli, giving her first speech in the job, is expected to say the UK faces a new “age of uncertainty” where the rules of conflict are being rewritten, particularly in light of wider Kremlin aggression after the invasion of Ukraine.
“The export of chaos is a feature, not a bug, in the Russian approach to international engagement,” the agency’s first female chief will argue, and “until Putin is forced to change his calculus” it is expected to continue.
Similar comments about the scale of the threat, particularly from Russia, are expected to be made by Air Chief Marshal Richard Knighton, the chief of the defence staff, who is due to say in a separate speech that “the situation is more dangerous than I have known during my career” and call for the country as a whole to be “stepping up”.
