UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham said Russia interfered in the 2016 referendum that took Britain out of the European Union, in podcast excerpts released on 11 October, the Associated Press reported. His remarks are believed to be the first time a British prime minister has publicly acknowledged such meddling.

Russia’s information war keeps running through Europe’s ballots. German security sources said in August that Moscow was escalating disinformation before state elections, and Ukraine’s Center for Countering Disinformation found more than 200 Russian fake news sites aimed at France last year.

One question, one clear answer

Burnham told The Rest Is Politics podcast that he asked his advisers whether Russia had interfered in the 2016 vote. He asked after taking office in July.

“I’ve had the clear answer that yes, there was,” he said.

He argued that such things must now be put clearly on the record. He did not say how Russia interfered or offer evidence, and Moscow has long denied interfering in foreign votes.

Burnham said he had discussed Russian interference with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz in Berlin the previous week. “You know he was saying to me that the AfD are clearly linked to Russia, funded I believe,” Burnham said, referring to Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany party. Putting such interference on the record would help “voters in Germany and France understand that some of this politics is instigated via our enemies, namely Russia,” he added.

Years of silence

In 2020, Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee found that the government had actively avoided investigating whether Russia meddled in the referendum. The report noted open-source signs of Russian attempts to sway the Brexit campaign. The government, it said, had never looked for hard evidence.

The government rejected the committee’s call for a review.

“We have seen no evidence of successful interference in the EU Referendum,” it said.

That same year, London said Russian actors had almost certainly tried to interfere in the 2019 general election. The government said they did it by amplifying leaked UK-US trade documents online.

From 2019 to 2016

Three weeks ago, Burnham stopped short of this. At the UN General Assembly on 22 September, he said the Kremlin spends around £1.3 billion each year on manipulating information. That is roughly $1.7 billion at recent exchange rates. He cited evidence that Russian agencies tried to interfere in the 2019 general election, but he did not mention 2016.

In the same speech, he said Britain had already helped Moldova protect its elections from Russian interference.

German industry expects Russian sabotage against the country’s companies to persist and take more forms, the deputy head of the Federation of German Industries (BDI) told Handelsblatt. His warning follows alarms from Germany’s intelligence services, which describe the country as a main target of Russia’s covert campaign in Europe.

Russia keeps striking Ukrainian cities and power plants every day while trying to weaken the European support that keeps Ukraine fighting. Germany is home to arms makers producing with and for Ukraine, so pressure on its companies targets the supply behind Ukraine’s defense.

Industry expects attacks to last and change form

The warning came from Holger Lösch, the BDI’s deputy managing director.

“German industry is preparing for the threat to persist and for attack methods to become more varied,” he told Handelsblatt. “Companies don’t end up in the crosshairs by chance,” he added.

Russian influence and sabotage operations are no longer an abstract scenario, and companies, critical infrastructure, and defense supply chains are already among their targets, Lösch said. Companies now receive more threat warnings, and their cooperation with the authorities has improved significantly, he noted. “What is still missing are joint procedures to quickly derive concrete measures from warnings,” Lösch said, calling the protection of the economy a cornerstone of national security.

German intelligence describes a Russian shadow war

The warning comes a week after a public hearing of the intelligence oversight panel of the Bundestag, Germany’s parliament, on 5 October. There, Martin Jäger, head of Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service (BND), said Russia was waging a shadow war against Germany. “Germany has become a main obstacle to Russian hegemonic power projection in Europe and thus a target of Russian action,” Jäger said. “The danger of attacks against targets in Germany remains real and present,” he warned.

Sinan Selen, head of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, told the same hearing that Russia was showing a readiness for sabotage and killings.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said on 1 October that Germany was preparing for further hybrid attacks, “including serious ones,” and would respond “quickly and very clearly,” as it did after the drone attack at Leipzig airport.

Drone bombs, arson, and paid saboteurs on German soil

In August, a drone carrying Semtex explosives hit the wing of a Ukrainian An-124 cargo plane at Leipzig/Halle Airport but did not explode. Germany blamed Russia on 1 September, and German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul said Germany was not at war with Russia but was a “target of war.”

German authorities suspect Russian intelligence of commissioning an arson attack near two Munich defense firms, and a confidential Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) assessment counted more than 165 suspected sabotage cases in Germany between January and August. The same assessment recorded 747 suspicious drone incidents involving 1,068 drones over critical infrastructure, military sites, and defense companies.

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Germany’s Military Counterintelligence Service (MAD) warns that the threat from low-level agents, locals paid small sums for one-off jobs such as arson or photographing military sites, has increased significantly. European intelligence agencies also report that Russia is increasingly targeting defense company executives, including at smaller drone makers, and the BfV has advised some German firms to hire close protection.

As long as Germany keeps backing Ukraine, Russian pressure on its companies is unlikely to ease, and the gap between warnings and action that industry flagged leaves smaller firms, with fewer resources for security, the most exposed.