Russia’s up to all sorts of dirty tricks, warns Boris

BORIS Johnson accused Russia of ‘all sorts of dirty tricks’ as spy chiefs warned that the general election in 2020 was at risk of cyber attacks.

The Foreign Secretary urged Britain to ‘beware’ of the Kremlin, days before he meets Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov.

His comments come as GCHQ called an emergency meeting with political parties to discuss the risk of interference.

The surveillance agency sees protecting British politics from foreign hackers as a priority, the Sunday Times reported.

GCHQ fears that Russian hackers could steal emails and leak them, or publish private databases of voters’ political views. Seminars will be held to educate politicians on the threat from the Kremlin after Russia was accused of helping Donald Trump win the US election by publishing 20,000 hacked emails from the Democratic Party.

Mr Johnson told ITV’s Peston On Sunday: ‘There is no doubt that they’ve been up to all sorts of dirty tricks.

‘Bringing down French TV stations, you’ve seen what happened in the US where there is no question they were involved in the hacking of the Democratic National Convention.

‘You’ve seen what happened in Montenegro where there was an attempted coup and possibly an attempted assassination of the leader. There is little doubt that the Russians are behind these things.’

‘Attempted coup’