Three held on suspicion of helping Russian intelligence

Three men have been arrested in London on suspicion of assisting Russia’s foreign intelligence service, the Metropolitan Police has said.

The three, aged 48, 45, and 44, were arrested at addresses in west and central London. Searches are ongoing at these and another address in west London.

They were arrested on suspicion of assisting a foreign intelligence service, namely Russia, under section 3 of the National Security Act (NSA) 2023, as part of an ongoing investigation into alleged offences under the act led by counter-terrorism police.

The arrests come as police work to clamp down on the increasing number of “proxies” being recruited by foreign intelligence services, the force said.

Cdr Dominic Murphy, head of Counter Terrorism Policing London, said the Met was seeing an increasing number of these.

“Anyone who might be contacted by and tempted into carrying out criminal activity on behalf of a foreign state here in the UK should think again,” he said.

“This kind of activity will be investigated and anyone found to be involved can expect to be prosecuted and there are potentially very serious consequences for those who are convicted.”

The arrests come after two men and a woman were arrested in Essex on suspicion of spying on behalf of Russia last month.

In May, six Bulgarians were jailed for spying for the Kremlin in the UK and across Europe.

And in July three men were found guilty an arson attack on a Ukraine-linked warehouse in London that was carried out after they were recruited by the Russian Wagner mercenary group.

The Wagner group is a private military organisation that acts on behalf of the Russian state. The UK government proscribed it as a terrorist group in September 2023.

MI6 has launched its own dedicated portal on the dark web in the hope of attracting new spies online, notably from Russia.

Earlier this month, MI5 boss Sir Ken McCallum said the intelligence agency is contending with near-record volumes of terror investigations and fast-rising state threats.

He said state threats from Russia, China and Iran are escalating and MI5 had seen a 35% increase in the number of individuals it was investigating in the last year.