RUSSIA’S top spy-catcher has accused the MI6 and the SAS of masterminding Ukraine’s war effort in yet another bout of Kremlin paranoia.
Alexander Bortnikov, Putin’s long-serving counter-intelligence chief, claimed British spies are “totally” in charge of Kyiv‘s security forces – orchestrating everything from sabotage raids to drone strikes on Russian soil.
The 73-year-old FSB boss made the extraordinary claims in a meeting in Samarkand, Uzbekistan.
He told fellow security chiefs from ex-Soviet states: “The Kyiv regime and its security bloc are totally controlled by the British.”
Bortnikov alleged that MI6 is plotting incursions by Ukrainian sabotage and reconnaissance groups into Russian border regions and planning attacks on critical infrastructure such as pipelines.
Elite SAS units, he said, are even “participating in combat actions against Russia.”
Read more on the Ukraine war
According to his ridiculously far-fetched accusations, British special services are “directly supervising” sabotage operations using “drones, unmanned boats, and combat divers”.
Bortnikov even accused them of orchestrating propaganda around the “Spiderweb” operation – June’s spectacular drone strikes on Russian strategic bomber bases.
Britain, he went on, was also allegedly behind efforts to block a peace settlement and was “orchestrating Brussels’ policy” to inflict a “strategic defeat” on Moscow.
“It is precisely the British who, through provocations and disinformation, are orchestrating Brussels’ policy aimed at disrupting the Ukrainian settlement,” Bortnikov insisted.
The paranoid spy chief even accused London of manipulating EU decision-making, whipping up Western fears of a “threat from the East” and playing a “main organising role” in global instability stretching from the Middle East to Asia.
Highlighting Moscow’s siege mentality in the fourth year of Putin’s war, he said: “The intelligence services of the leading Nato countries play the main organising and coordinating role in…..the emergence of most of the current zones of instability — in the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and Europe.”
Bortnikov is a Cold War-era KGB officer who joined the service the same year as Putin and has led the FSB since 2008.
He painted a picture of MI6 and Britain’s special forces as puppet-masters behind almost every setback faced by Russia in its war.
Bortnikov even claimed British-linked recruiters were targeting Russians “including teenagers and pensioners” for terrorist attacks via more than 120 Ukrainian call centres.
The remarks underline the Kremlin’s siege mentality as Putin’s invasion drags into its fourth year.
Western analysts say they also reveal how deeply Moscow sees foreign plots behind its battlefield losses and domestic dissent.
London has so far not commented officially on the latest allegations.
But the UK Ministry of Defence has previously dismissed similar claims as baseless.
The Sun has contacted the MoD and the UK Foreign Office for comment.
