Russian officials just piped up over MI5′s recent warning Moscow agents are looking to cause “mayhem” on British streets and wrote the claims off as “scare tactics”. On Tuesday, MI5′s director-general Ken McCallum claimed Vladimir Putin’s “henchmen” were looking to strike away from the battlefield “in the misguided hope of weakening Western resolve”.

The head of Britain’s domestic security service said Russia’s military intelligence service was pursuing “dangerous actions conducted with increasing recklessness.”

Russia's intelligence agency has been on a sustained mission to generate "mayhem on British and European streets", the head of MI5 has said, as he warned the UK faces the most "complex and interconnected" threat it has ever seen.