UK sanctions senior Russian GRU officers over cyberattacks
The foreign ministry said it was sanctioning three units of the Russian military intelligence GRU agency and 18 of its officers, including those it said were involved in targeting strikes against Mariupol during the war in Ukraine, and spying on former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia before they were targeted in a Novichok poisoning in 2018.
"GRU spies are running a campaign to destabilise Europe, undermine Ukraine's sovereignty and threaten the safety of British citizens," Foreign Secretary David Lammy said in a statement.
British authorities have repeatedly accused Moscow of orchestrating malign activity, ranging from traditional espionage and actions to undermine democracy, to sabotage and assassinations.
Earlier this month, three men were convicted over an arson attack on a Ukrainian-linked business in London which police said was carried out at the behest of the Wagner mercenary group.
Moscow has rejected such accusations, saying they were politically motivated and that it posed no threat to Britain. The Russian embassy in London did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The European Union and NATO issued statements on Friday condemning what they described as Russia's destabilising hybrid activities.
In its latest announcement, Britain said three Russian GRU units - 29155, 26165 and 74455 - had targeted media outlets, telecoms providers, political and democratic institutions, and energy infrastructure in the UK and across Europe.
Among these incidents were an Estonian government hack in 2020, a cyber attack on the German Bundestag in 2015, the hacking in 2016 of the U.S. Democratic National Committee and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and cyber attacks on the Paris Olympics last year, Britain said.
The British foreign ministry also said Unit 26165 had conducted reconnaissance on the Mariupol Theatre in March 2022 ahead of air strikes which local officials said killed about 300 people and which Russia has denied deliberately targeting.
In addition to the GRU-focused sanctions, the ministry said it was sanctioning three leaders of "African Initiative", which it said was a Russian-funded social media content mill conducting information operations in West Africa.
Britain has recently ramped up its military spending to help change its approach to defence, partly to address threats from Russia, nuclear risks and cyberattacks.
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BBC News
4 minutes ago
- BBC News
Government expands police use of live facial recognition vans
More live facial recognition (LFR) vans will be rolled out across seven police forces in England to locate suspects for crimes including sexual offences, violent assaults and homicides, the Home Office has announced. The forces will get access to 10 new vans equipped with cameras which scan the faces of people walking past and check them against a list of wanted people. The government says the technology has been used in London to make 580 arrests in 12 months, including 52 registered sex offenders who breached their conditions. However, campaign group Big Brother Watch said the "significant expansion of the surveillance state" was "alarming". Live facial recognition was first used in England and Wales in 2017 during the Uefa Champions League final football match in Cardiff. Since then its use has largely been confined to South Wales, London and Essex including at a Beyoncé concert to scan for paedophiles and terrorists. The government is now funding ten vans equipped with LFR to be shared between seven forces, approximately doubling the number of vehicles. The seven forces are Greater Manchester, West Yorkshire, Bedfordshire, Surrey, Sussex, Thames Valley and Hampshire. The technology identifies people by taking measurements of facial features including the distance between the eyes and the length of the jawline and then comparing the data to to an existing watchlist. Each van will be staffed with a trained officer who checks the matches identified by the technology. Simultaneously, the government is holding a consultation on what safeguards are needed to "ensure transparency and public confidence", ahead of drawing up a new legal framework. Big Brother Watch is bringing a legal challenge against the Met Police's use of the technology, alongside Shaun Thompson, who was wrongly identified by an LFR camera. Rebecca Vincent, interim director of Big Brother Watch, said: "Police have interpreted the absence of any legislative basis authorising the use of this intrusive technology as carte blanche to continue to roll it out unfettered, despite the fact that a crucial judicial review on the matter is pending."The Home Office must scrap its plans to roll out further live facial recognition capacity until robust legislative safeguards are established."Charlie Whelton, policy and campaigns officer at Liberty, said: "It's welcome news that the government will finally develop a statutory framework on the use of facial recognition, but this should be in place before more facial recognition technology is rolled out."There's no reasonable excuse to be putting even more cameras on our streets before the public have had their say and legislation is brought in to protect all of us."The government says officers using the LFR vans will need to follow the College of Policing's guidance on the technology and the Surveillance Camera Code of Practice. It also says independent testing of the facial recognition algorithm by the National Physical Laboratory found that "the algorithm is accurate and there is no bias for ethnicity, age or gender at the settings used by the police".Chief Superintendent of South Wales Police Tim Morgan said: "We understand the concerns which are raised about the use of live facial recognition technology and we use any new technology ethically and spend time and effort making sure it's deployed in line with all legislation and guidance."The Police Federation of England and Wales, which represents police officers, said: "The government must also invest in comprehensive training programmes for officers to accompany this technology rollout, particularly as police forces face an unprecedented officer retention crisis."Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said the government would "provide police with the tools they need to do their jobs". "Facial recognition will be used in a targeted way to identify sex offenders or people wanted for the most serious crimes who the police have not been able to find." The Home Office has also announced that it has fulfilled a manifesto pledge to ensure there is a named, contactable officer in every neighbourhood in England and Wales. It said people can search for an officer on the website of local police forces, who have signed up to a commitment to respond to queries within 72 hours. The type of contact method provided will be up to individual forces.
Daily Mail
4 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
The scoundrel great-grandfather of baby killer Constance Marten: How promiscuous aristocrat left film star lover lamenting his 'flashes of cruelty', writes CHRISTOPHER WILSON
As she sits in prison awaiting sentencing for her part in the death of her newborn baby daughter, Constance Marten will have plenty of time to dwell on some history. Her grandmother, Mary Marten, was a goddaughter of the Queen Mother, and her father, Napier, was a page to Queen Elizabeth II. But you do not need to go much further back to lurch from royal favour to some truly scandalous behaviour. Marten's great-grandfather, the 3rd Lord Alington, was said to be the most dissolute man ever to enter the House of Lords. Also called Napier, he indulged in wild same-sex orgies while keeping a mistress old enough to be his mother. He spent money like water, encouraged drug taking and illegal behaviour, and was constantly searching out novel ways to slake his prodigious sexual thirst. Napier Senior perhaps found a mentor in the naughty King Edward VII, who came to stay at Crichel with his mistress Alice Keppel. Napier – Naps to his friends - sent his girlfriend, the oversexed (or, as she described herself, 'ambisextrous') actress Tallulah Bankhead, to seduce the boys at his old school, Eton. One was just 14. The Home Secretary, William Joynson-Hicks, ordered MI5 to investigate 'this extremely immoral woman' - but the school refused to co-operate, and the boys in question were expelled for 'motoring offences' (Bankhead had taken them to a hotel in her car). Bankhead, a lively bisexual, introduced herself to Alington with her famous line, 'I'm a lesbian. What do you do?' What didn't he do? Invited to a ball in Paris, he managed to shake that unshockable city with his behaviour. His lover would later say of him: 'I was irked by his nonchalance, his cynicism, his flashes of cruelty. 'He wasn't good looking, he had an almost repulsive mouth, but he lived recklessly. 'He scorned the conventions, loved to gamble and, when it pleased him, had great wit and charm.' In his book The Fatal Englishman, author Sebastian Faulks related one particular story that revealed Naps' character in a flash. 'One of the most remorseless pleasure-seekers in Europe, Naps went dressed as the Sun King, his costume consisting of a number of rays attached to his gilded skin. 'As the evening progressed, he gave away the rays, one by one, until even his Louis XIV mask and his golden stockings were gone. 'When he returned to the Ritz Hotel at dawn the old ladies in the Place Vendome were taking their poodles out for an early morning walk. 'The manager of the hotel rushed out to wrap him in a blanket – but not before Alington, on the steps of the hotel, had removed his golden fig-leaf and presented it to the Ritz as a souvenir of his night out.' That sounded like fun, but there was a much darker side – in part, perhaps, because his anguished elder brother Gerard, who should have inherited the title and lands, committed suicide on Armistice Day in 1918. He had been grotesquely wounded in the first months of the war and paralysed from the waist down. Throughout his tragic last days, his father bullied him unmercifully. 'The whole family is vicious,' wrote the diarist and MP Henry 'Chips' Channon. 'Too aristocratic ever to feel the fetters of position or morals or standards. They love low-life and sexual experiments.' Quite as unruly was Alington's sister Lois - a drug-addled, needy, woman who flaunted her royal connections but was constantly in need of money to feed her habit. She became the mistress of Reggie Pembroke, a crusty old earl and the owner of nearby Wilton House. Although he was old enough to be her father, she sponged off him and encouraged him to be her sugar daddy. She then had a fling with Prince George, Duke of Kent, before becoming engaged to a number of different men. When she finally married, to the exclusively homosexual Viscount Tredegar in a swish ceremony at the Brompton Oratory, it was said there wasn't a single person in the congregation that the couple hadn't slept with. Back to Naps though. Chips Channon confessed he too had slept with him. 'Unbelievably handsome,' he recalled, 'with a smile that nobody has ever resisted. 'He carried the world before him but he was not quite human. 'He was a centaur, a satyr without morals, stability or ambition. He was an enchanting companion but one who sadly squandered his charm, his health, his fortune, and his time. 'He could never rest, drank all night, was surrounded by sycophants, and went to bed with anyone and everyone he met.' Despite his sexual preferences Naps married – not Tallulah Bankhead, though they talked about it – but Lady Mary Ashley-Cooper, daughter of the Earl of Shaftesbury. Their only child, Mary Anna – Constance Marten's grandmother – inherited Crichel, which then passed to her son, the younger Napier. Though outwardly more conventional than his namesake grandfather, it was in 1996 - when Constance was just nine years old - that this Napier had a so-called awakening. A voice in his head told him to quit his Crichel inheritance, shave his head, and fly to Australia. Leaving his small children behind at home, he adopted a life of whale-watching and spiritual discovery. He became a tree-surgeon and later admitted, 'I do recall having a recognition of myself that I was exhibiting some sort of courage, but of course, in many other people's minds I was exhibiting some sort of cowardice.' He recollected an out-of-body experience on a clifftop, and how an encounter with whales made him cry 'almost nonstop' for seven days. 'I found myself looking down at my sleeping body,' he said. 'The next thing I know, I'm flying out into the ocean into the dark waters and swimming with the whales. 'I'm being pulled along by them and there is this conversation going on... it was a complete clearing out, a transmission of energy. 'These days of expansion unfortunately can't be repeated, but when one's in it, it is the most exciting part of your life.' Constance's father claims he does not know how long his exile lasted. He eventually returned to the UK, but not to his old life at Crichel House - he lived in a lorry, worked as a chef, then trained in a form of head massage called craniosacral therapy. He passed his estate on to his eldest son Max, who was studying environmental science and geography at Oxford Brookes University at the time. In 2013, Max sold the house and 400 acres of its land to American hedge fund billionaire Richard Chilton for a reported £34 million. All this high life and big money is very far from a cramped cell in a Surrey women's prison where prisoner A9624X Constance Marten now awaits sentencing on charges of manslaughter by gross negligence, concealing the birth of a child, perverting the course of justice by not reporting her death, and child cruelty.
Daily Mail
34 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
The Summer of Supercars begins: High-powered multi-million-pound fleet of sports cars owned by Saudi billionaires descend on London - as police go on red alert for law-breaking
Fleets of supercars driven by wealthy Saudi billionaires and international playboys have swarmed London - as police go on the offensive in a major crackdown on lawbreakers. High-powered luxury motors have been seen revving their engines through some of the capital's most exclusive areas, home to millionaire tycoons, celebrities, sports stars and business moguls. Rich tourists travelling from abroad have been arriving in the city to lap up the summer, paying a small fortune to fly in their flash cars to ride around the likes of Knightsbridge, Kensington, Westminster and Chelsea. However, some of those owners jetting in from overseas have seen their motors nabbed by police within a matter of hours as part of a huge sting targeting those flouting insurance rules. The seized vehicles signal the start of the city's 'supercar season', when wealthy Arabs flee the scorching hot temperatures of the Middle East and cruise around the capital in their extravagant vehicles. Over the weekend, dozens of supercars worth around £7million were seized across Hyde Park, Kensington and Chelsea - with some slapped with bright 'no insurance - seized by police' signs on their windshields. Two identical purple Lamborghinis- which were uninsured and had been flown into Britain for their owner's summer trip - were also impounded. One of the two drivers had been in Britain for just two hours, and behind the wheel for only 15 minutes, before being caught. The arrival of the luxury motors has become a regular event in recent years, with rich Kuwaitis, Saudis and Emiratis seeking to out-do each with their souped-up vehicles. They are often spotted waiting in gridlocked traffic in some of central London's most popular areas or parked up outside designer shops and luxury boutiques, including Harrods. It is thought owners pay in excess of £20,000 to fly their vehicles around 3,000 miles to London. Qatar Airways is one of the operators that facilitates the transportation, with airport staff securing vehicles to the floor of the relevant aircraft before flight. However, the fleets of high-end motors racing through the capital's historic roads at all hours of the day and night have previously caused a headache for locals. In places like Kensington, mega-rich owners shamelessly flout parking rules by leaving their fancy cars in the road without paying for the privilege. Fed-up councils have previously deployed armies of traffic wardens and tow-trucks to tackle luxury supercars left in disabled bays on yellow lines. The car owners, many believed to be from the Middle East, are likely unbothered by the £110-£160 parking fines in the likes of Kensington - having already splashed out a small fortune to import their swanky machines into the UK. Other instances have seen police being scrambled to tackle nuisance drivers as they loudly rev the engines of their high-powered cars through the city into the early hours. Police are seen targeting London's millionaire boy racers during an operating in Kensington In 2020, some 18 officers were called out to Kensington to target millionaire boy racers as their charged through the exclusive borough. Officers found cars with missing number plates as they issued warnings for loud exhausts and anti-social driving after a number of calls were made to 999. A Lamborghini, Porsche, and high-power BMWs were among a number of the motors stopped on the popular shopping street in a bid to cut down the racing. For other supercar tourists, jetting into London offers them a way to flaunt their expensive fleet of motors. One young Saudi billionaire - thought to be in his twenties - is often seen cruising around London in his ostentatious fleet of gold supercars worth more than £1million. The uber-rich visitor, dubbed one of Britain's flashiest tourists, regularly flies in his gaudy fleet of motors seemingly to avoid using public transport to get around. His flashy collection includes a £370,00 Mercedes G63, a six-wheel off-roader, a Bentley Flying Spur, worth £220,000, a £350,000 Rolls-Royce and a £350,000 Lamborghini Aventador SV. The Saudi's fleet of high-end gold sports cars are thought to be worth more than £1million All the vehicles are wrapped in a vinyl gold, which is thought to cost about £4,000 a car, and are often seen outside some of the capital's most opulent haunts. Among them includes the five-star Mandarin Oriental hotel near Hyde Park and Cadogan Place, where the average house price is just over £9.2million. His motors have previously been seen with parking tickets slapped on their windscreen after illegally being left outside the Jumeirah Hotel in fashionable Knightsbridge. As part of their effort to try and stamp out the number of nuisance supercars plaguing London, the Metropolitan Police deployed 75 officers to hunt out rule breakers last week. The crackdown by Scotland Yard came amid reports of anti-social and dangerous driving, alongside drivers being a 'nuisance' across hotspot areas of London. The operation, led by the Met, was supported by the Motor Insurers' Bureau (MIB) - which said several of the seized cars had been brought into the UK from abroad. Many of these vehicles' drivers had been relying on motor insurance from the home countries and failed to verify if those policies provided valid coverage in Britain - leading to the cars being impounded by cops, with 72 seized in all. The small army of cops used everything from automatic number plate recognition - or ANPR for short - to predictive vehicle movement tracking and vehicle markers to track down luxury cars without the right insurance. Officers also detected a range of other criminal activity in their crackdown. This included individuals wanted for actual bodily harm and criminal damage, for drug offences, vehicle theft, immigration offences and for fraudulent insurance policies, known as 'ghost broking'. Cops also handed out countless tickets for a range of other crimes , including driving without a valid licence, using a mobile phone while driving, and failing to have a valid MoT. A previous clampdown by the Met Police in August last year saw a haul of supercars worth £6million seized as boy racers were accused of using London as 'their own personal racetrack'. Extravagant vehicles including McClarens, Bentleys, Rolls-Royces, Ferraris and Lamborghinis were among the 60-strong collection confiscated by Scotland Yard. It came after concerns had been raised about the streets of central London becoming more like 'racetracks' - prompting officers to swoop into action. Metropolitan Police Special Inspector Geoff Tatman said: 'The Met is working to put communities first - listening to and tackling their concerns. 'This hugely successful operation has proved we are dealing with those crimes, such as anti-social driving, that is causing most distress to residents and tourists.' He insisted officers were 'doubling down on crime on the roads' as he praised the 'hard work and dedication' of Scotland Yard's volunteer special constables. Insp Tatman described them as playing 'a vital role in our mission to make London safer' as they 'kindly give up their free time to help serve the community'. Council chiefs suggested similar further moves could lie ahead. Paul Dimoldenberg, Westminster council's lord mayor, previously lambasted wealthy motorists for deliberately ignoring road rules. Parking enforcement officers from Westminster Council are seen issuing fines after two luxury cars were parked illegally 'People who think it is okay to use our roads as their own private racetrack late at night are not welcome in Westminster,' he said last year during his time as the council's city management boss. 'The noise and dangerous driving from these boy racers is often worse during the summer, so I welcome these results from the enforcement work.' Speaking of this week's supercar seizures, Special Chief Officer James Deller from the Met Police, said the operation was part of the force's effort to tackle anti-social behaviour. He added: 'This operation was set up to respond to resident, business and visitors' concerns about high-value vehicles causing a nuisance in known hotspot areas in central and west London.' SCO Deller insisted the crackdown had been a 'real success' in helping to educate drivers and enforce the law. Further joint operations between the Met and MIB are planned later this year.
