BRITAIN ANNOUNCES HUNT FOR RUSSIANS

British Prime Minister Theresa May has appointed Ben Gummer as Minister for Countering Subversive Activities, reports rbc with reference to The Times.

Ben Hammer, Boris Johnson and Theresa May

The priority of his activity in this post will be "protecting the integrity of British democracy". How пишет The Times, the British government is concerned that hacking attacks, the spread of "fake news" with the help of Russian news services such as Sputnik and RT, as well as Russian funding of political movements and parties can affect the results of the next elections in the country and "destabilize democracy" …

As The Times notes, a new approach to cyber security in Great Britain began to be developed after a hacker attack was carried out on the French TV2015Monde channel in April 5. Initially, it was reported that the TV channel was attacked by an Islamist group, but later Bloomberg reported, citing informed sources, that these incidents, as well as a number of others, such as the hacking of the website of the Warsaw Stock Exchange, the sending of virus-infected letters and interference with the operation of the equipment of the ThyssenKrupp steel plant in Germany, involved in groups of Russian hackers.

British Foreign Minister Boris Johnson said on ITV on Sunday, March 12, that in Great Britain "there is no evidence that the Russians are actually involved in attempts to undermine our democratic processes", however, in his opinion, "there is a lot of evidence that that the Russians are capable of it." Johnson also stated that in the past Russia "used dirty tricks". As examples of such "tricks", Johnson cited the hacking of the French TV channel TV5Monde, the mail servers of the National Committee of the Democratic Party of the USA and the request for a coup d'état in Montenegro.

"A coup d'état was attempted in a European state, and perhaps even an attempt was made to kill the leader of this state. Now few people doubt that the Russians are behind these events, not to mention what they did in Ukraine," Boris Johnson said.