UK Government Claims British Cyber-Agents Guarding Ukraine Online

The British government has claimed that its cyber-spying agencies are defending Ukraine from Russian cyber-attacks.

Junior foreign office minister Leo Docherty told a British television news channel on Tuesday that the UK was itself facing "a very significant cyber threat from Russia" and was helping its allies in Kiev defend against the same menace.

He admitted that no serious cyber-attacks had yet been carried out, but claimed that was due to the vigilance of the UK's National Cyber Security Center (NCSC).

"We're already on the frontline… We are aware of the threat. We have raised our own preparations and our own defenses," Docherty said. "That's why we've got some deep expertise when it comes to cyber defense and that's why we've been very pleased to share it with our Ukrainian allies."

The minister insisted that the NCSC's work on behalf of the Zelensky regime did not represent direct British intervention in the conflict in Ukraine, something which Russia has already accused the UK of.

He instead compared it to the government's arms supplies to Kiev's forces — which began before Russia launched its special military operation on February 24.

"I think that's a perfectly honorable and not an escalatory thing to do," Docherty claimed. "It's the Ukrainians at the forefront of the fight in terms of defending their homeland and… we provided some of the materiel and expertise to allow them to do that very, very efficiently."

Russia has accused British intelligence agencies of coordinating the Ukrainian attack on the port of Sevastopol in Crimea on Saturday — which used British-supplied submersible drones — as well as the bombing of the Kerch Bridge to Crimea on October 8 and the Nord Steam 1 and 2 gas pipelines across the Baltic Sea.

A major British newspaper reported on Sunday that Russian agents had hacked the mobile phone of Liz Truss, who resigned as prime minister earlier this month after just six weeks in office, in the summer when she was serving as foreign secretary.

Later, on Tuesday, Russian Foreign Affairs Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova demanded Downing Street respond to claims circulating on alternative media that Truss sent an SMS message to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken a mere minute after the Nord Stream explosion stating: "It's done."

"Frankly, I do not care who obtained this information and how," Zakharova said. "Millions of people around the world are now waiting for an official response to this question and they have a right to know what happened to global energy security and what role the Anglo-Saxons played in the terrorist attack."

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The NCSC is a unit of the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the UK's signals intelligence service, which also gathers telephone and Internet usage data on British citizens.

NCSC chief executive Lindy Cameron said she was "proud to have played a part in supporting Ukraine's cyber defenders," who she claimed had "mounted an impressive defense against Russian aggression in cyberspace, just as they have done on the physical battlefield."

Four former Ukrainian regions — Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporozhye, and Kherson — have been formally incorporated into the Russian Federation since the start of the military operation in February.