Ireland is a ‘playground’ for Russian intelligence, says former army chief
Lisa O'Carroll in Dublin
Mon 7 Oct 2024 13.50 BST
Comment follows claim Kremlin recruited member of parliament to damage UK-Irish relations during Brexit talks
Ireland is a “playground” for Russian intelligence, a former deputy chief of an Irish army
unit has said following claims that a member of parliament was recruited by the
Kremlin to undermine Anglo-Irish
relations during Brexit talks.
Cathal Berry, now a Teachta Dála (TD,
member of the Irish parliament), said he had not been surprised by a report at
the weekend that the unnamed politician had been recruited “as an agent of
influence” in a honeytrap operation.
“If you are looking to affect a
western country with extensive assets and a poor security culture then Ireland
is ground zero,” Berry told the Irish Times. “Here the Russians get maximum
impact for minimum effort. It is a playground for them.”
According to the report in the Irish
Sunday Times, the aim of the operation was to build contact with loyalist
paramilitaries at a time of sensitive discussions with the UK about whether
there would be checks on the Irish border or not.
The reported mission ties in with
wider hybrid warfare efforts identified by the EU which it says can involve anything from disinformation to
suspected arson and antisemitic attacks.
“Russia has written the manual on
hybrid operations, misinformation, disinformation, cyber-attacks, anything
that’s deniable or that’s very difficult to attribute to them,” said Berry, a
former second-in-command of the Irish Ranger Wing and now an independent TD for
Kildare.
According to the newspaper, the Irish
military and security services identified the potential agent, code-named
Cobalt, but he remains in office. There is no apparent evidence of him having
being paid or having passed information to the Russians. He has not been
arrested or charged.
The opposition TD Richard Boyd
Barrett has called for action by the
authorities. “I think anybody who has been corrupted by any external power
rather than serving the interests of ordinary people has a serious case to
answer,” he said.
The politician was said to have been recruited by Sergey Prokopiev, who worked in the embassy in Dublin
from 2019-22, and was expelled two
years ago after allegations he was an undeclared intelligence officer.
On Sunday the taoiseach, Simon
Harris, said he would not comment on matters of security but noted that Ireland
was “not immune” to Russian attempts to influence public discourse.
“It shouldn’t come as any surprise to
any of us that Russia seeks to influence
public opinion, seeks to distort
public opinion and is active in relation to that across the world and that
Ireland is not immune from that,” he said. “We’ve also seen a very significant
increase in that level of activity since the brutal invasion by Russia of
Ukraine.”
Asked whether he knew who the alleged agent was, Harris said he could
not comment on security matters but that he was “satisfied that our gardai and
our intelligence services working internationally with counterparts take this issue very, very seriously”.
The
Russian embassy said on Monday it had “always believed that
there is no sense or value in commenting” on what it described as “the
primitive anti-Russian concoctions”
in the Sunday Times.
Russia’s presence in Ireland has
previously been the subject of concern,
with planning permission to quadruple the size of the Russian embassy
overturned by the government in 2020 due to concern over the new complex’s
purpose.
At the time, Berry said the proposed
complex, which would have included a subterranean network of 20 storage rooms,
10 power plant rooms and 13 toilets, looked more like a “nerve centre” for
Russian intelligence.
Pre-reading part
Task 1. Paraphrase the statements. Do you agree or disagree? Why (not)? How is the statement related to the
headline of the article?
A
friend to all is a friend to none.
If
you throw mud enough, some of it will stick.
While-reading part
Task 1. Read the article and be ready to translate it.
Task 2. Write out the words and phrases given in bold.
Explain the meaning in English. Translate into Russian.
Task
3. Make
up a dialogue/interview using new vocabulary.
Post-reading part
Task 1. Divide the text of the article into logical parts. Make
up questions to each logical part.
Task 2. Be ready to discuss in the classroom with your groupmates:
A) Think what word will serve as a
key word of the article. Find synonyms in the text of the article. Which sphere
do they come from?
B) What was the correspondent’s
intention to tell the public about? Does he sound objective or subjective?
C) What is the main idea/problem
raised?
Task 3. Give a summary of the article.
Task 4. Write a rendering of the article. Mind the rules of a rendering writing.
Task 5. Learn the new
vocabulary from the article be ready to write the dictation-translation.
