MI6 chief uses rare speech to warn Russia: don’t underestimate the West
- It is only Alex Younger’s second public speech since becoming head of the intelligence service four years ago
- MI6 boss told students if they ‘want to make a difference’ and think they ‘have what it takes’ then the chances are they could become a spy
The chief of Britain’s foreign intelligence service warned the Kremlin on Monday not to underestimate the West after a brazen nerve agent attack on a retired double agent in England that the UK blamed on Russia.
In only his second major speech since being made head in 2014 of the Secret Intelligence Service, or MI6, Alex Younger insisted Russia has a stance of “perpetual confrontation” with the West.
After the attack on Sergei Skripal, a former Russian military intelligence officer who betrayed dozens of agents to MI6, Britain’s allies in Europe and the United States took its side and ordered the biggest expulsion of Russian diplomats since the height of the cold war.
Britain identified the nerve agent deployed in the English town of Salisbury as Novichok, a highly potent group of nerve agents developed by the Soviet military in the 1970s and 1980s.
“The Russian state used a military-grade chemical weapon on UK soil,” Younger told students at the University of St Andrews in Scotland where he once studied economics and computer science before joining the British army. “Our intention is for the Russian state to conclude that, whatever the benefits it thinks it is accruing from this activity, they are not worth the risk.”