Vlad to worse

TSAR Vladimir Putin’s plot to turn British spies into traitors is another worrying twist in a dangerous Cold War battle.

Smarting from humiliating failures by his GRU military intelligence to assassinate Sergei Skripal in Salisbury and launch a cyber-attack on a chemical weapons research laboratory in the Netherlands, he will be eager to strike back.

Rival security services regularly attempt to recruit moles in other countries’ networks and we should acknowledge that Skripal himself was a GRU member bought by MI6.

But the Foreign Office memo we reveal illustrates how blackmail is a weapon and even retired spies are considered fair game in a covert fight for international supremacy.