Sunday Mirror

WATTS YOUR GAME?

Hunt for power saboteurs Spooks are trained to poison handles

- BY ALAN SELBY BY NIGEL NELSON Political Editor

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.” RUSSIAN spies were trained to put poison on door handles, a dossier uncovered by UK intelligen­ce reveals.

The “smoking gun” fact in the file is said to prove Russia was behind the attempted murder of Sergei Skripal.

Last week the Sunday Mirror 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. revealed police were examining the Skripals’ front door handle. It had the highest concentrat­ion of the deadly nerve agent Novichok.

The attack led to 150 Russian diplomats being expelled from 27 countries.

The door handle informatio­n has been shared with Britain’s allies and a security source said: “It’s the smoking gun that helped persuade allies it could only be Russia that did this.”

Mr Skripal’s daughter Yulia, 33, also poisoned in Salisbury on March 4, woke on Thursday, but her dad, 66, is still in a coma. She can remember everything until losing consciousn­ess.

 ??  ?? FLIGHT ROW A Russian jet FIFTY more UK officials were ordered out of Moscow yesterday – as a row brewed over a Russian plane search at Heathrow.
Russia has already expelled 23 British diplomats after 23 Russian diplomats were ordered to leave...
FLIGHT ROW A Russian jet FIFTY more UK officials were ordered out of Moscow yesterday – as a row brewed over a Russian plane search at Heathrow. Russia has already expelled 23 British diplomats after 23 Russian diplomats were ordered to leave...

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