'Vladimir Putin's gangs of Russian spies are now reckless and desperate'

Russia is becoming desperate and the behaviour of its intelligence agencies is a direct reflection of what they are allowed to do by President Vladimir Putin

Russian spies have become increasingly reckless in their bid to destabilise the west.

They have blatantly tried to murder former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia with Novichok nerve agent. That 2018 attack in Salisbury ended with the appalling death of innocent local woman Dawn Sturgess.

And there was little hint that the spies were trying to hide their identities, even laughably claiming they were in Salisbury as tourists. Two of those directly involved carelessly cast aside the bottle containing the dangerous nerve agent in what appeared to be a perfume bottle.

There have been many suspected Moscow hits on people living in Britain before and since that attempted and bungled assassination. For years Russia has not cared about Britain knowing it was launching deadly missions inside our country. In 2006 Russian spies cruelly poisoned former KGB man Alexander Litvinenko, who was a prominent critic of President Vladimir Putin.

He suffered immensely in hospital from polonium-210 poisoning after being infected by the two Russian spooks. And it took several weeks to die as counter terror police desperately tried to trace the full trail of poison left by Russia across London.

There is little doubt Vladimir Putin gave the go-ahead for the assassination and little doubt that he does not green-light all of the major killings by Moscow’s intelligence agencies. Only last month the head of MI6 Richard Moore said during a joint interview with head of the CIA William Burns that Russian intelligence is becoming “feral” and “reckless.”

He revealed that Moscow is now using criminal gangs for state-sponsored terror attacks across Europe which are endangering lives because they are “more amateurish.”

And this latest crude experimenting with deadly incendiary devices marks a step-change in its thuggish challenges to the world order. Russia is becoming desperate and the behaviour of its intelligence agencies is a direct reflection of what they are allowed to do by President Vladimir Putin.

There is no way that they could behave in such a way if this was not approved of by Putin because they simply would not dare to contradict him.

If that is what he thinks is acceptable behaviour it shows how close he believes we now to open warfare between NATO and Russia. This has been coming for some time and it may be time that the threshold for warfare has been breached by Russia, which is clearly coming out of the shadows.

At some point the west, led by the US will have to prod Russia and let Putin know that enough is enough and this cycle of violence cannot continue.

And with every day that passes that day is fast approaching us.