UK Faces Rising Threats From State Actors And Terrorists, Says MI5 Chief

Last Updated:October 17, 2025, 01:42 IST

MI5 chief reports a 35% rise in UK suspects linked to hostile foreign governments, citing Russian, Chinese and Iranian state threats and recent ISIS-linked Manchester attack.

UK spy chief Ken McCallum. (Reuters/UK Government/Handou)

The United Kingdom has had a 35% rise in the last year in the number of suspects investigated annually for probably working for a hostile foreign government, chief UK’s domestic security service, MI5 said on Thursday.

During the service’s annual update on threats facing the UK, Ken McCallum said, “A more hostile world is forcing the biggest shifts in MI5’s mission since 9/11," and that his “teams are currently running near-record volumes of investigations."

He expressed condolences to the families of the two people killed in an ISIS-linked attack on a synagogue in Manchester earlier this month.

The chief further said that the “aggregate scale of the terrorist threat is huge," and the combination of rising threats from state actors as well as from a mix of terrorists with “Islamist, extreme right wing or other ideologies" heralded a “new era".

According to CNN, the UK has seen a variety of espionage and sabotage incidents in recent years, from Chinese influence operations targeting the parliament to Russian-directed arson against warehouses supplying Ukraine’s forces.

McCallum said there had been “more than 20 potentially lethal Iran-backed plots" in the past year. “State threats are increasing. … In the last year, we’ve seen a 35% increase in the number of individuals we’re investigating for involvement in state threat activity," he said, adding that these individuals were in UK than directing operations from overseas.

“The state threat activity I’m describing is overwhelmingly dominated by the triumvirate of Russian, Chinese and Iranian state actors," he said.

Speaking on the nature of the Russian threat, he said: “In terms of its lethality, the activities are spread. This ranges from, in some cases, arson, in some cases attempted sabotage. In some cases, pretty detailed attempts to gather specific targeting information about individuals. … the only obvious purpose of which would be to make it feasible for someone then to do something nasty, potentially lethal, towards those individuals."

According to CNN, in May, Orlin Roussev, 47, was sentenced in a London court to nearly 11 years in jail for leading a British-based Russian spy ring, which prosecutors said carried out surveillance for the Kremlin.

Five other members of the gang were jailed for about 40 years, all accused of gathering detailed information on journalists, dissidents and Ukrainian soldiers being trained at a US military base in Germany.

CNN quoted McCallum referred twice to “proxies" for Russia perhaps not receiving payment for their work from their handlers, yet declined to provide specifics. “I am able legally to say, I don’t think it’s a good career move to work for the Russian Intelligence Services in the United Kingdom," he said.

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