Vladimir Putin’s spy chief has alleged NATO is gearing up for "large-scale conflict in the east". Sergei Naryshkin, head of Russia's SVR foreign intelligence service, claimed the alliance was making preparations for such action.
Anne Keast-Butler told the inaugural GCHQ annual lecture that Russia is “relentlessly targeting critical infrastructure, democratic processes, supply chains and public trust”.
Mr Naryshkin was also quoted by the RIA news agency as saying the European Union was quickly arming itself and becoming a military alliance “directed against Russia”.
Ukraine has been urging the EU to help negotiate an end to the full-scale war which has raged for more than four years.
The bloc’s foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas on Thursday said the EU will “never” be a neutral mediator between Moscow and Kyiv.
“Because we are on Ukraine’s side, and we are defending our own core security interests,” she said.
"We can't be neutral, treating them equally, because we have been clearly on Ukraine's side.”
She said EU foreign ministers were adamant that "all our efforts have to be complementary to US efforts”.
"We are not coming in instead of the United States, but we are actually addressing the issues that they haven't been addressing in these talks,” she added.
US-led negotiations on ending the war have been on hold since the outbreak of the Iran war in February.
France’s foreign ministry spokesperson has said Europe needs to be involved in the talks between Russia and Ukraine because “its own interests are at stake”.
She said Mr Putin is "going backwards on the battlefield" as analysis suggests Russia’s rate of advance is slowing, with Ukrainian forces starting to regain more ground than they are losing for the first time since 2023.
This was echoed by Ms Kallas who told reporters that “the dynamics of the war are shifting in Ukraine’s favour”.
“Russia is on the back foot, militarily, economically, but also diplomatically, but as the latest strikes on Kyiv have shown, Russia still shows no genuine interest in peace, which was also the clear view of the ministers today,” she said.
