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Hunt for power saboteurs

POWER stations are being checked for Russian sleeper agents on the staff who could spike the UK’s power supply.

As relations with Vladimir Putin’s regime plunge to new lows over former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia’s poisoning, there are fears Russia’s president could activate hidden saboteurs.

Security measures creating a safety gap between operational IT and the internet have been installed to ward off a Russian cyber attack on critical UK infrastructure.

But a former senior British Intelligence officer told the Sunday Mirror: “If there was an insider, the gap could be bridged with a USB stick putting malware into the system.” Britain’s spymasters began tightening security around the electric supply after foiling a 1997 IRA plot to blow up six electricity sub-stations serving London.

Such an attack would hit London’s water supply and sewage, leading to dysentery, typhoid and cholera.

New security measures were devised to ward off threats.

MI5’s Centre for the Protection of National Infrastructure weeds out potential saboteurs with its Holistic Management of Employer Risk programme.

Twenty-nine countries have now expelled 145 Russian diplomats in solidarity with the UK – and Nato has ordered 10 Russians out of its mission in Belgium.

THREAT UK power supplies