LONDON — The head of Britain’s foreign intelligence agency has thanked Russian state television for its “help” encouraging Russians to spy for the U.K. after it translated and broadcast part of a speech he gave earlier this year in which he called on Russians to “join hands with us.”
Anchor Maria Butina — herself a former Russian spy — included the clip at the top of a program about Richard Moore, the head of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, also known as MI6.
Moore gave the speech in July at the British Embassy in Prague where he openly encouraged Russians faced with “the venality, infighting and sheer callous incompetence of their leaders” to spy for Britain.
On Monday, Moore tweeted that the British foreign intelligence agency had been “puzzling over how to get my message to our target audience in Russia — we never thought Russian state TV would step in to help.”
“Thanks folks,” he added.
Butina introduced the clip at the start of an hourlong program in September about the MI6 chief and appeared to scoff at the suggestion that Russians would spy for the UK.
Accusing Moore of employing “cheap recruiting methods,” she questioned whether he was seriously asking Russians “to buy into this shameless provocation?”
Butina is a former covert Russian agent who spent more than a year in prison in the United States after admitting that she sought to infiltrate conservative U.S. political…
