The scale of those expulsions, together with the rollout of Western economic sanctions designed to isolate Russia, had proved a surprisingly potent test for Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, he added.
Well before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Britain was especially sensitive to the activities of Russian agents, and its pushback against Moscow’s spy networks intensified after the nerve agent poisoning of Sergei V. Skripal, the former Russian agent, and his daughter, Yulia, in Salisbury, England, in 2018.
Since that episode prompted Britain to expel 23 Russian diplomats on espionage grounds, it has refused 100 diplomatic visa applications from Moscow.
But Russia is continuing to use an extensive range of disruptive tactics, including cyberattacks, disinformation, espionage and interference in democratic processes. It has also sought to deploy the wealth of its oligarchs, many of them British-based, to peddle influence.
Tensions with China have also increased lately. But in contrast to Moscow, Beijing appears to be playing a more subtle and strategic “long game,” Mr. McCallum said. Not only is it seeking to co-opt and influence Britain’s lawmakers across the political divide, but it is also cultivating contacts early in their careers in public life, hoping to build a debt of obligation to exploit later.
Nonetheless, opponents among the Chinese diaspora in Britain have been subject to the sort of harassment and coercion seen recently when a pro-democracy protester was attacked at the Chinese Consulate in Manchester. In that clash, the protester, a supporter of democracy in Hong Kong, said he was dragged inside the consulate grounds by masked men and then kicked and punched.
