‘Malicious’ Russian spies accused of major cyberattack on US and UK as Biden imposes sanctions | Political news

The Foreign Ministry summoned the Russian ambassador over fears of “malicious behavior” as the United States announced sanctions against Moscow.

Cyber ​​intrusions, interference in democratic processes and the strengthening of military forces near the Ukrainian border and in illegally annexed Crimea were among the reasons the Foreign Ministry said it summoned Andrei Kelin.

Joe Biden said on Thursday he was imposing sanctions on Russia for meddling in the 2020 presidential election and a cyberattack on the US government and corporate networks.

Last year, the United States officially named Russia’s foreign intelligence service as the perpetrator of the SolarWinds cyberattack in which more than 40 U.S. government organizations, including federal agencies, and those with contracts with the government were hacked.

Some of the victims were outside the United States, including in the United Kingdom, Belgium, Canada, Israel, Mexico, Spain and the United Arab Emirates.

Today Sir Philip Barton, Permanent Undersecretary of the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), “made it clear” to Mr Kelin that the UK supports the sanctions, a spokesperson said. word.

“The British government is deeply concerned about a pattern of malicious behavior by the Russian state,” he added.

Sir Philip told the Russian Ambassador that the UK also felt that Russian intelligence “was behind the SolarWinds compromise”.

FCDO said the impact in the UK was assessed by the National Cyber ​​Security Center (NCSC) – which is part of GCHQ – as “low” with a “low single-digit number” of organizations in the UK. public sector that have been targeted.

He said the government had worked with affected organizations to ensure they were “quickly mitigated”.