‘Russia thinks it is at war with Britain’
RUSSIA’S leaders believe they are “at war” with Britain and could even bring down the EU, a former spy who wrote the infamous “dirty dossier” on Donald Trump has said.
MI6’S former chief Kremlin expert Christopher Steele, 57, even suspects Russian agents may have left him a threatening “calling card”.
He said intruders put two wedding rings in his wife’s washbag while they were on a Caribbean holiday, about 18 months after his name emerged as the author of the dossier.
Asked what message he thought they were sending, Mr Steele said: “We know where you are.we can get to you. Don’t think you’ll be able to hide from us.”
In his first British TV interview after his dossier’s bombshell claims of Russia’s influence on the Trump campaign in the 2016 US election, Mr Steele warned of a growing threat.
“There are serious people at the top of Russia who regard themselves at war with us,” he told Sky News. “The fact that our politicians neither want to recognise or deal with that is a big problem.”
Mr Steele left MI6 after a more than 20-year career in 2009 and set up London-based private intelligence company Orbis Business Intelligence. Hired by a law firm representing Mr Trump’s rival Democrats, he compiled a series of unverified reports which included claims of collusion, and that Moscow held compromising video tape of Mr Trump. These were published in January 2017.
Mr Steele said the Trump project is only a fraction of the work Orbis has done and is still doing on Russia – but the resulting furore four years ago “profoundly affected” the career of his wife, Katherine.
At the time, she was a crown servant at the Foreign Office and took early retirement. He said he was looking into the impact of suspected Russian interference in European countries in the run-up to the Brexit vote in 2016.
He added: “I think they think they could possibly collapse the EU.”
Mr Steele confirmed that he had uncovered evidence of hostile operations against Britain.
His firm’s investigations take in “everything from corrupt leadership money being brought onshore and invested in strategic industries” to attempts at political interference in the UK, which he categorises as “hostile behaviour”.
Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for President Vladimir Putin, declined to comment on any of the allegations.
Lord Mark Sedwill, the UK’S national security adviser until last year, said he believes political leaders do recognise the Russia threat – one that he said is “diversifying”.
A Foreign Office spokesman said: “The UK government has been clear that it had no involvement in the production of the dossier.”
Mr Trump has dismissed the Russia dossier as a “hoax”.
He denied colluding with Moscow and has denounced the sex tape claims as false.
He has also derided Mr Steele as a “failed spy”.