The UK government is focusing on Russia in a security program designed to shield the country from harmful foreign influence, the British security minister, Dan Jarvis, said.
The new UK initiative will be a crucial tool for the “detection and disruption of harmful activity against our country,” according to the British government.
Russia has been formally declared a national security threat to the UK for the first time.
Dan Jarvis, the security minister, announced that Russian agents working on behalf of Vladimir Putin’s regime will be forced to register their activities or face five years in jail.
In a statement to the Commons, Dan Jarvis said Russia presented an “acute threat” to UK national security through hostile acts in recent years, including the Salisbury nerve agent poisonings, espionage, cyber attacks and the invasion of Ukraine, The Telegraph reported.
Dan Jarvis informed legislators that those “carrying out activity as part of any arrangement” with Russian authorities, including government agencies, the armed forces, intelligence services, and the parliament, will have to register with the Foreign Influence Registration Program starting on July 1st.
Anyone who chooses not to sign up faces a five-year prison sentence. According to Jarvis, Russian political groups under the supervision of the Russian government will also have to register before they can directly conduct business in the UK.
The new UK program, according to the administration, will be a crucial instrument for the “detection and disruption of harmful activity against our country.”
In March, Iran became the first nation to be classified under the new British program. At the same time, the exclusion of China has been questioned by lawmakers.
Dan Jarvis decline to say whether China would be added to the enhanced tier, although British ministers have previously indicated that it would not because the UK government regards a closer relationship with China as “in our national interests”.
Jarvis mentioned unfriendly Russian actions in the past few years, such as the 2018 poisoning of a former Russian spy and his daughter with the nerve agent Novichok in the UK and the cyberattacks and espionage tactics used against British lawmakers.
“Clearly Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine has highlighted its intent to undermine European and global security,” Jarvis stated.
