Exposed: How Vladimir Putin's spies are trying to manipulate Britons against Ukraine

Russian spies are waging psychological warfare against Britain, America and NATO to weaken Western resolve for Ukraine, the FBI has warned.

The Kremlin is targeting politicians, business leaders, journalists and social media influencers to trick them into questioning support for Kyiv.

They are creating fake news websites, mirroring established brands across Europe, to sow division and chaos, said the FBI.

Critical to doing so, investigators believe, is discrediting “Great Britain” due to London’s military, economic and political support for Ukraine and its diplomatic standing. The US is also a key target.

This would then make it easier for Moscow’s spies to weaken support for Kyiv in Germany and France.

FBI Director Christopher Wray said: “Today’s announcement exposes the scope of the Russian government’s influence operations and their reliance on cutting-edge AI to sow disinformation.

“Companies operating at the direction of the Russian government created websites to trick Americans into unwittingly consuming Russian propaganda.

“By seizing these websites, the FBI is making clear to the world what they are – Russian attempts to interfere in our elections and influence our society.

“The FBI will continue to work with our partners to expose and shut down these covert influence campaigns.”

Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen, from the Justice Department’s National Security Division, added: “The Russian government and its proxies are aggressively accelerating the Kremlin’s covert efforts to seed false stories and amplify disinformation.

“Russia is willing to impersonate our free and open press in its egregious schemes.

“To Russia, and any other government seeking to stoke discord in our society: know that we will spare no effort and use every available tool to disrupt and expose this malign activity and defend our democratic institutions.”

The US Justice Department revealed it has seized more than 30 internet domains that were being weaponised by the Russian government to influence Western nations.

The domains included fakes of Reuters, Der Spiegel, Bild, Le Monde, Le Parisien, Welt, FAZ, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Delfi and others, and were paid for with cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin, according to the FBI affidavit.

Sergei Kiriyenko, a close ally of Vladimir Putin, was overseeing the internet websites, filled with Russian propaganda – despite their appearance as Western news outlets.

One memo from Russia’s “Social Design Agency” described a plan to target people through real posts and comments on social media to circumvent social media companies' bot filters.

The Russian document says it wants people to begin questioning “why do WE need to help Ukraine”.

And discrediting Britain was a crucial part of the Kremlin’s plans, intelligence officials believe, with other nations such as Germany more vulnerable to the operation.

The FBI quoted an internal Russian note as saying: “First and foremost, we need to discredit the USA, Great Britain and NATO, and secondly,” convince Germans to oppose the “inefficient politics of sanctions”.

Another Social Design Agency document outlines an operation called “International Conflict Incitement” targeting specifically France and Germany.

Its objective was stated as: “To escalate internal tensions ... in order to promote the interests of the Russian Federation,” as well as “to influence real-life conflicts and artificially create conflict situations” via fake articles, influencers, as well as targeted posts and comments on social media.

The Russian document added that the goal was to “destabilise the societal situation” in France and Germany by “spreading additional false narratives”, “fake videos, documents, and telephone conversation recordings”, “comments on social media”, and “fake and real quotes from influencers”.

Former defence secretary Ben Wallace has warned that Vladimir Putin “is coming for us” and Britain must be prepared “for the inevitable”.

Mr Wallace said the tyrant blames “Britain, not the US”, for being “at the heart of Russia’s failures”.

The new head of the Army, General Sir Roly Walker, has previously warned Britain must be ready to fight a major war in three years as Russia will seek revenge on the West for aiding Ukraine.

Mr Wallace said Putin and his henchmen – former KGB spies known as Siloviki – “do not accept that they were the culprits behind the Soviet Union they inflicted on the Russian people”.

Mr Wallace declared: “These men at the top of Russia see themselves as rewriting history, by correcting the humiliation they felt at the end of the Cold War and settling scores for hundreds of years.

“While Russia is doing a very good job of, yet again, humiliating itself through its own actions, we should realise that in Putin’s version of history it is Britain, not the US, which is at the heart of Russia’s failures.

“In Putin’s warped worldview, we were behind the Crimean war and defeat of the Czars, we were behind the rise of Hitler, we were behind the counter-revolution and our espionage was behind the end of the Soviet Union.

“Britain is in Putin’s crosshairs. One of the most senior members of the Russian Siloviki recently commented: “We know Britain is behind the invasion of Kursk”. We weren’t.

“Make no mistake, Putin is coming for us. We must be prepared for the inevitable.”