New intelligence shows that almost half a million Russian soldiers have been killed since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, the UK’s spy chief has said.
Anne Keast-Butler, head of the UK intelligence agency GCHQ, said the death toll shows Vladimir Putin is “going backwards on the battlefield”.
This marks the first confirmation of the number of Russian soldier deaths, with previous numbers including those wounded as well as killed.
Keast-Butler made the comments in an annual inaugural lecture on Wednesday.
Setting out the agency’s assessment of the threat landscape, she said Russia was “scaling up its daily hybrid activity” against the UK and Europe and “relentlessly targeting critical infrastructure, democratic processes, supply chains and public trust”.
She highlighted GCHQ’s efforts in “disrupting Russia’s efforts to smuggle western tech, fending off cyber attacks, and countering reckless sabotage and assassination attempts”, adding, “as we remain steadfast in our support for Ukraine, Putin is going backwards on the battlefield”.
Keast-Butler set out how Russia is increasing its daily hybrid activity against countries, including Britain, and how China is now a “science and tech superpower with sophisticated capabilities”.
She urged the public and businesses to make cyber security “ten times more urgent”.
She explained how the speed of advancements in technology means there is a “narrowing window for the UK and allies to stay ahead”.
She urged the technology industry and those working in national security to “anticipate and drive advancements, together, at the speed of the frontier”, as well as calling on the public to take action “from boardrooms to living rooms” to increase cyber security.
She said: “At home, that means taking important action now to switch passwords for passkeys, and for wider society, it means hardwiring security into new technologies, protecting supply chains and making cyber security 10 times more urgent.”
Earlier this year, Dr Richard Horne, head of the National Cyber Security Centre, which is part of GCHQ, warned that most nationally significant cyber attacks on Britain were carried out by hostile states including China, Iran and Russia.
He said the body dealt with around four of these attacks each week, and warned businesses to be prepared to protect themselves against cyber attacks without needing the option of paying ransoms, because the UK could be targeted “at scale” if it were to become involved in an international conflict.
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