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.
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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”.
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.