Defense Secretary Wes Streeting said Tuesday that Russia is testing the UK daily through "warfare tactics," describing the activities as "effectively state-backed terrorism."
"Every single day Russia is testing us," he told the House of Commons Defense Committee. "The term hybrid threats offers a sanitized version of what are acts of sabotage, targeted assassinations, effectively state-backed terrorism."
"That's the world in which we're living today. It is extremely uncertain," he added.
Earlier Tuesday. MI5 chief Sir Ken McCallum also said Russia remained "aggressor number one" and that the agency's operational missions against terrorism and state threats were now "pretty much of equal scale."
McCallum said Russia was waging "hybrid warfare" against the UK and other European countries while avoiding actions that could trigger a joint response from NATO.
He warned that the Kremlin would be "foolish to cross" that line.
Russia has stopped short of "conventional conflict" and instead seeks to destabilize European countries, while its progress in its full-scale invasion of Ukraine remains "minimal and horrifically costly," he said.
