PROFILE: Spies from Beijing and Moscow — the United Kingdom, a global intelligence battlefield

PROFILE: Spies from Beijing and Moscow — the United Kingdom, a global intelligence battlefield

Introduction: June 2026, the United Kingdom under pressure from foreign spies

Two pro-China espionage convictions, a resounding warning

On June 18, 2026, a British court convicted two men for spying on behalf of China. This verdict arrived in a documented context of intensifying foreign intelligence activity on British soil — not only Chinese, but also Russian and Iranian. The United Kingdom has become a great-power competition arena where the MSS (China's Ministry of State Security) and Russia's FSB vie in audacity to infiltrate its institutions, steal its technologies, and compromise its sensitive personnel.

This June 18 verdict is not an isolated case. It came while in Sweden, the trial of an army consultant accused of spying for Russia opened on June 15, 2026 in Stockholm. Ten days earlier, a 34-year-old man had been arrested in Sweden after traveling to Moscow in November 2025 to meet FSB representatives. Europe is not only being attacked by missiles and drones — it is being infiltrated, case by case, agent by agent, into its most sensitive institutions.

China, the new espionage frontier in Europe

For a long time, the espionage threat in Europe was associated almost exclusively with Russia. The Skripal affair, GRU cyberattacks, documented Russian electoral interference — all of this dominated the European counter-intelligence landscape. But since 2022–2023, British, European, and American intelligence services have been documenting a spectacular acceleration of Chinese operations on Western soil.

El País reported in June 2026 that China is expanding its espionage networks across the European Union and beyond, targeting defense technologies, artificial intelligence, critical infrastructure, and political processes. This is not the same war as Russia's — it is a more patient war, more strategic, operating on longer time horizons. But it is no less dangerous for the West.

The profile of convicted spies: who does the MSS target in the United Kingdom?

Carefully selected targets by Beijing

The full details of the two men convicted on June 18, 2026 were not entirely made public — British justice kept certain elements sealed to protect intelligence sources and methods. What is known: these convictions concern individuals who transmitted sensitive information to agents of the MSS, China's Ministry of State Security, one of the most active and best-resourced intelligence services in the world.

The MSS recruitment strategy is documented by Western services: it primarily targets people of Chinese ethnic background living abroad, people with family in China who can be used as leverage, professionals with access to sensitive technologies, and researchers collaborating with Chinese institutions. Profiles are diverse and methods varied — from classic recruitment to coercion, through to strategic manipulation.

Priority sectors: defense, technology, politics

In the United Kingdom, the sectors most actively targeted by MSS operations include defense (military technologies, arms contracts), advanced technologies (artificial intelligence, quantum computing, biotechnology), and political processes (influence over parties, media, think tanks). These priorities reflect the Made in China 2025 strategy and Beijing's long-term geopolitical ambitions.

MI5 Director General Ken McCallum publicly declared that the threat from China is "the most significant counter-espionage threat we have ever faced." This public statement is itself a signal: British authorities want their citizens — and particularly those in vulnerable positions — to be aware of the threat that has arrived on their doorstep.

Russian espionage in Sweden: same week, same methods

The Swedish military consultant trial

On June 15, 2026, two days before the British pro-China espionage convictions, the trial of a Swedish army consultant accused of attempted espionage for Russia opened in Stockholm. The case confirms a classic pattern: an individual with access to sensitive information, approached by Russian agents, who agreed to cooperate.

Sweden, a NATO member since 2024, represents a significantly higher-value target for Russian services. Its recent Alliance membership made its military personnel, government officials, and defense researchers infinitely more interesting to the GRU and FSB. The Russians want to understand how the Swedish military integrates into NATO command structures, what its vulnerabilities are, and which technologies it is adopting.

The June 10 arrest and the Moscow journey

On June 10, 2026, Swedish authorities arrested a 34-year-old man who had traveled to Moscow in November 2025 to meet FSB representatives. That trip to Russia — a country at war, whose border with Swedish territory has become that of an opposing alliance — was itself an act that should have triggered alerts from his employer and counter-intelligence services.

The fact that he could travel to Moscow, meet FSB agents, and return to Sweden without being immediately stopped raises questions about the effectiveness of personnel screening for sensitive positions. Counter-intelligence services acknowledge this challenge themselves: in a context of high-tempo adversarial activity, preventive screening of all potentially targeted personnel is an immense undertaking that current resources cannot fully match.

China in Europe: a long-game espionage strategy

Influence and intelligence networks across the EU

El País documented in June 2026 the expansion of Chinese espionage networks across the European Union. These networks operate simultaneously on several levels: traditional recruitment of agents with access to sensitive information, influence operations targeting media and political circles, and cyber-espionage targeting government institutions and high-value private technology companies.

China's espionage strategy is qualitatively different from Russia's. Beijing is not primarily seeking to destabilize democracies in the near term — it is seeking to accumulate technological, economic, and informational advantages over the long term. This is the "unrestricted warfare" model conceptualized by generals Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui in the 1990s: winning without fighting, by circumventing adversary defenses through all available means.

MSS special operations against diaspora communities

One of the most troubling dimensions of Chinese espionage in Europe is the targeting of overseas Chinese diaspora communities. Unofficial Chinese "police stations" have been documented in multiple European countries, including Ireland, Spain, and the United Kingdom, used to surveil, intimidate, and potentially recruit diaspora members. These operations violate the sovereignty of the affected states and create a climate of fear within Chinese communities living in Europe.

European governments have reacted to these revelations with varying degrees of outrage and resolve. Some — notably the Anglophone countries within the Five Eyes framework — have taken firm measures to shut down these operations and expel implicated diplomats. Others adopted a more cautious approach, wary of damaging their commercial relationships with Beijing. That unequal response is itself a vulnerability the MSS does not hesitate to exploit.

MI5 and allied services facing operational overload

Two simultaneous threats, limited resources

Britain's counter-intelligence services — MI5 for domestic counter-intelligence, MI6 (SIS) for foreign intelligence, and GCHQ for signals intelligence — face an unprecedented situation: two top-tier adversaries, Russia and China, simultaneously conducting intensive operations on British soil and against British interests abroad.

This simultaneity imposes difficult prioritization choices. Human and technical resources are not infinite. In previous decades, British counter-intelligence could concentrate most of its resources on the Soviet and then Russian threat. Today it must simultaneously manage the Russian threat (still intense), the Chinese threat (rapidly growing), the Iranian threat (documented through IRGC operations), and the terrorist threat. That is a quadruple pressure without historical equivalent.

Britain's legislative strengthening and its limits

The National Security Act 2023 modernized the legal framework for combating espionage, extending the definition of espionage acts to include foreign influence operations and creating the foreign influence registration scheme. These legislative tools improve prosecutors' ability to secure convictions — as the June 18, 2026 verdict concretely illustrates.

But the law has its limits. It can convict low- and mid-level agents. It cannot, on its own, deter the intelligence services of foreign states that operate entirely outside any effective international legal framework. Deterrence in this domain relies more on the capacity to detect, expose, and expel adversarial agents than on the threat of criminal prosecution that the masterminds themselves never directly face.

France, Germany, and spies on European soil

A pan-European wave of adversarial operations

Le Monde reported in June 2026 that Russia's shadow looms behind several sabotage and espionage attempts on French soil. China-linked espionage cases have been documented in Belgium, Germany, and the Netherlands. A Ukrainian national was arrested in France for alleged espionage on behalf of Russia. The phenomenon documented in the United Kingdom and Sweden is not unique to those two countries — it is a pan-European wave.

This wave illustrates that the problem far exceeds the response capacity of individual member states working alone. Coordination between European intelligence services exists — notably through informal signals intelligence alliance sharing and bilateral exchanges — but it has not reached the level of integration that would enable a genuinely collective and effective response to operations that are, for their part, perfectly coordinated across borders.

Toward a European counter-intelligence agency?

The idea of a European counter-intelligence agency or strengthened coordination under the EU banner is gaining traction in Brussels security circles. The obstacles are considerable — member states are extremely jealous of their intelligence sovereignty, and mutual trust in sharing classified information builds slowly. But the operational pressure from adversaries is growing faster than institutional resistances can hold out.

EU Defense Commissioner Andrius Kubilius, who has already sounded the alarm on Russian hybrid attacks, is one of the advocates for a more integrated European approach to security. His statements in June 2026 on the need to prepare for more attacks fit into this vision of a Europe that is finally equipping itself with the collective means to defend its own home front from within.

The France case: a Ukrainian national arrested for alleged Russian espionage

The complexity of intelligence operations in wartime

The arrest in France of a Ukrainian national suspected of spying for Russia illustrates a painful reality: Russian services do not only recruit Russian nationals — they exploit economic, personal, or family vulnerabilities to recruit agents from within Ukrainian populations themselves. This practice has been documented since the 1990s, but it took on a tragic dimension after the 2022 invasion.

Ukrainians living abroad can be subjected to pressure through family members remaining in occupied territories or in Russia, compelled to provide information under threat of reprisals against their relatives. This is not ideological betrayal — it is coercion. Its victims deserve to be distinguished from voluntary agents. The justice system and counter-intelligence services must make that distinction clearly, and systematically.

Protecting Ukrainian nationals abroad

For the millions of Ukrainians who sought refuge in Europe since 2022, the threat of manipulation by Russian services is a daily reality. The FSB and GRU have developed sophisticated capabilities for targeting and recruiting within the Ukrainian diaspora, using social networks, family ties, and economic hardship as approach vectors.

European governments and host services bear a responsibility to protect these populations — not by surveilling them, which would be counterproductive and unjust, but by informing them of the risks, providing secure reporting channels if they are approached, and developing psychological and economic support programs that reduce their vulnerability to Russian pressure. That is the duty of care democracies owe to those who fled tyranny.

Academic and economic networks as espionage vectors

Using universities and companies as covers

An often underestimated dimension of Chinese espionage in Europe is the use of academic and economic networks as covers or intelligence collection vectors. Chinese researchers in European universities, Chinese companies forming joint ventures with European technology firms, Chinese investment funds taking stakes in strategic companies — all of this can simultaneously serve legitimate commercial purposes and intelligence operations.

This ambiguity is deliberately maintained by Beijing. The 2017 National Intelligence Law and the 2021 Data Security Law create legal cooperation obligations with the Chinese government for all Chinese companies and individuals. Any Chinese national operating abroad is potentially subject to demands from Chinese intelligence. That is not a hypothetical risk — it is a legal reality enshrined in Chinese domestic law.

Responses from European universities and companies

Facing these risks, European universities and companies have progressively strengthened their security procedures for intellectual property and international collaboration. Restrictions on exchanges in sensitive domains, security audits of research projects with foreign partners, staff security training — these measures are being adopted across the European academic and technology sector at an accelerating pace.

But these efforts meet cultural resistance in an academic world that fundamentally values openness and international cooperation. Finding the right balance between legitimate protection of sensitive intellectual property and maintaining academic freedom is a challenge that European universities have not yet fully resolved. The MSS counts on that tension — and knows how to exploit it from the inside.

The China paradox: commercial partner, intelligence adversary

Beijing's carrot-and-stick policy

The core difficulty for European governments is that China is simultaneously their leading commercial partner (or among their first), a major investor in their economies, and a documented adversary in intelligence and intellectual property. This combination creates considerable internal political tensions: Ministries of Trade and Economic Affairs push to maintain commercial relations, while intelligence agencies and Defense ministries alert to the growing security risks.

Beijing deliberately exploits this tension. The implicit threat of trade sanctions or economic retaliation weighs on the policy decisions of governments tempted to adopt firm measures against Chinese intelligence activities. This is a form of economic coercion that conditions democracies' security responses — and deserves to be named for what it is: a hostile act by a state that weaponizes trade to protect its intelligence operations.

The gradual collapse of the engagement consensus

The political consensus that prevailed in the 2000–2015 period — that economic engagement with China would favor its evolution toward greater liberalization — has collapsed in most Western capitals. The United Kingdom, following the Huawei ban of 2020, the Chinese espionage report, and now these convictions, has clearly chosen a firmer posture toward Beijing.

This evolution is necessary and welcome. It does not mean a complete break with China — economic realism forbids that scenario. But it means a clearer distinction between domains where cooperation is acceptable and those where it is dangerous, and a political will to actively defend national security and interests against Chinese intelligence activities, whatever the short-term commercial cost to specific industries and sectors.

The June 18 conviction: a strong but insufficient signal

What the verdict communicates

The June 18, 2026 convictions send several simultaneous messages. First, that the United Kingdom has the capability and the will to detect, prosecute, and convict MSS agents operating on its territory. Second, that the National Security Act 2023 functions as a legal instrument with real teeth. Third, that Chinese espionage is no longer treated with the diplomatic gloves that long protected it from serious legal consequences in the West.

These messages are important, but they have their limits. Two convictions represent a tiny fraction of the operations the MSS is probably conducting in the United Kingdom at any given time. The service will not run short of operational agents because two of them were convicted in London. Judicial deterrence has real but bounded reach against state intelligence apparatuses funded by a sovereign government with trillion-dollar resources.

Toward a more systemic response

The systemic response must combine judicial prosecution with reinforced resilience of target institutions, better awareness of exposed personnel, more rigorous screening of access to sensitive information, and enhanced international cooperation to share intelligence on MSS operations across allied countries. No single element of that combination is sufficient alone.

The Five Eyes — United Kingdom, United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand — constitute the hard core of that cooperation. Their collective warning of June 24, 2026 on the risks posed by Chinese AI advances for cyberattacks illustrates the capacity to communicate collectively on shared threats. That same dynamic must now apply to traditional counter-intelligence operations on European soil.

MSS digital operations: cyberattacks and data theft

Chinese cyber-espionage, the invisible dimension of the intelligence war

Alongside traditional intelligence operations, China maintains a vast cyber-espionage apparatus targeting European governments, companies, and research institutions. Attacker groups linked to the MSS and the People's Liberation Army — known as APT10, APT41, or Volt Typhoon — are responsible for massive intellectual property theft, infiltrations of government networks, and prepositioning in critical infrastructure.

These cyber operations and human intelligence operations complement each other: the human spy can identify targets and provide access credentials that the cyber team will then exploit. Conversely, digitally stolen data can identify targets for human recruitment. This synergy between HUMINT and SIGINT/cyber is one of the most formidable characteristics of the Chinese intelligence program — and the one least understood by the public institutions it routinely victimizes.

The response of European cybersecurity services

ENISA (the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity) and its national counterparts have considerably strengthened their detection and response capabilities against Chinese cyberattacks. Exchanges of compromise indicators between allied services, sector-specific security audits, and the imposition of stricter security standards on critical infrastructure operators are among the responses underway across the continent.

But the technological race between Chinese attackers and European defenders is constant. Every defensive advance is followed by an offensive adaptation. The structural advantage of attackers — who only need to succeed once, when defenders must succeed every time — remains a reality that cybersecurity officials acknowledge with candor. The West is defending, and defense alone never wins an asymmetric contest.

The international law vacuum: an inadequate framework

The absence of binding norms against state espionage

One of geopolitics' uncomfortable realities is that espionage between states is not clearly prohibited under international law. The Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations protects certain categories of agents but is widely circumvented. States spy — all of them — and international norms on the subject are deliberately vague to allow all actors to continue their activities without triggering formal legal consequences.

This normative vacuum is exploited by authoritarian states' intelligence services, which can conduct far more aggressive operations than their Western counterparts without risking systemic sanctions. The solution is not to fantasize about an international espionage law that will never materialize — it is to strengthen democracies' deterrence and response capabilities to make adversarial operations costly enough to be reconsidered before they are launched.

Diplomatic expulsions as a pressure tool

The most commonly used diplomatic tool against state espionage is the expulsion of diplomats operating under cover. Since 2022, multiple European countries have expelled dozens of Russian diplomats identified as intelligence agents. These expulsions are symbolically important and genuinely reduce the operational capacity of targeted services in the short term. But the affected services reconstitute their networks — less visible, harder to target.

Against China, the reluctance to proceed with diplomatic expulsions has historically been far greater, given economic interests and fear of commercial retaliation. This asymmetrical treatment — more firmness with Russia, more caution with China — is a strategic vulnerability that Beijing exploits with full awareness of the mechanism it is using against us.

Building security culture: preparing personnel for the threat

Awareness as the first line of defense

In the fight against espionage, the first line of defense is every person with access to sensitive information. A university researcher who understands MSS approach techniques is infinitely harder to recruit than a naive researcher. A civil servant who knows they will be targeted if they travel to certain countries or maintain certain commercial relationships will be more careful in their daily decisions and interactions.

The awareness programs developed by MI5 in the United Kingdom, the BfV in Germany, the DGSI in France, or SÄPO in Sweden are an essential component of counter-espionage defense. But they still reach only a fraction of exposed personnel, and their effectiveness depends on making the threat concrete and credible for people who are not naturally part of the intelligence world and who often resist acknowledging their own vulnerability.

Security culture in academic and technology environments

Developing a security culture in academic and technology environments — where the tradition is maximum openness and knowledge sharing — is one of the most complex challenges of contemporary counter-intelligence. The goal is not to turn researchers into counter-intelligence agents, but to help them understand that some of their interlocutors — at conferences, in collaborative projects, in academic exchanges — may have objectives that go well beyond scientific advancement.

This awareness must be accompanied by clear channels for reporting suspicious approaches, without fear of professional reprisals or stigmatization. Researchers who report an attempted approach by foreign agents must be protected and thanked — not interrogated as suspects. Building that culture of trust between the security community and the academic world is a long-term project that both sides must commit to seriously.

Assessment: Europe facing the challenge of systemic espionage

A threat larger than what convictions reveal

The British convictions of June 18, 2026, the Swedish trial of June 15, the Stockholm arrest of June 10 — all of this represents the visible tip of an iceberg. For every agent detected, prosecuted, and convicted, how many operate undetected? Counter-intelligence services themselves acknowledge that the detection rate is far from one hundred percent, even in the best-equipped countries with the most experienced personnel.

That reality should impose humility in triumphalist discourse about democracies' capacity to defend their internal security against adversarial services. Judicial victories are real and important — but they do not exhaust the threat. They reveal its scale, while reminding us of the structural gap between the scope of adversarial operations and the resources currently allocated to counter-intelligence across European member states.

Investing in internal security as a strategic priority

The logical conclusion is a call to invest massively in counter-intelligence capabilities — in personnel, digital surveillance technologies, training, and international coordination. These investments are less visible than a Leopard tank or an F-35 fighter, but they are just as essential to national security in the world we now inhabit, where the most dangerous battles are fought in corridors and servers rather than on open battlefields.

A Europe that is increasing its defense budgets to respond to the war in Ukraine must also increase its counter-intelligence budgets to respond to the silent war that Russia, China, and Iran are waging against its institutions. These are two faces of the same security challenge — demanding an integrated response that is truly proportionate to the documented and growing threat.

Conclusion: the profile of a Europe besieged from within

Two spies convicted, one systemic signal

Two men convicted in London for spying for China. A military consultant tried in Stockholm for spying for Russia. A man arrested in Sweden after meetings with the FSB. A Ukrainian national arrested in France for alleged espionage. One week of revelations that paints the portrait of a Europe besieged from within — not by armies, but by agents: patient, methodical, financed by states that have decided invisible warfare is the best strategy for eroding Western democracies without the costs of a declared conflict.

This portrait is uncomfortable. It forces the acknowledgment that our open societies, our transparent institutions, our welcoming universities — everything we value in our democracies — are also vectors of vulnerability for adversaries who operate without the same constraints. Accepting that reality without tipping into paranoia and closure — while genuinely strengthening our defenses — may be the most complex political challenge of our era for the countries that define themselves by their openness.

The choice of lucid resistance

The answer is not to close our universities, expel all foreign diplomats, or treat every citizen of Chinese or Russian origin as a suspect. It is to build intelligent, proportionate defenses grounded in intelligence and international cooperation. To protect what must be protected. To invest in the services that do this difficult work in the shadows. And to recognize publicly, as the convictions of June 18, 2026 do, that our adversaries operate within our borders — and that we have the will and capacity to hold them accountable for it.

Zelensky fights on a visible front. Our counter-intelligence agents fight on an invisible one. Both battles deserve the attention, support, and resources that democracies are capable of mobilizing when they truly decide to defend themselves — and both battles are being fought, whether we acknowledge them or not.

By Maxime Marquette, columnist

Columnist's transparency note

My sources and method

This profile is based on information made public about the June 18, 2026 convictions in the United Kingdom (primary source: The Straits Times), the Russian-Swedish espionage cases of June 10 and 15, 2026, and secondary sources documenting Chinese and Russian intelligence operations in Europe. I do not have access to the sealed court files or to classified intelligence briefings. Factual elements presented as certain are drawn from verifiable primary or secondary sources, clearly identified.

My method: cross-referencing primary sources (reference media, official statements) with analytical secondary sources, and explicitly flagging when I speculate, infer, or acknowledge uncertainty. I have not invented quotations or attributed statements to individuals who did not make them. Uncertainty about operational details of these cases is explicitly acknowledged throughout this article.

My assumed biases and what I do not know

I am in favor of strong counter-intelligence and a firm posture by democracies against authoritarian states' intelligence operations. That bias influences my framing — I acknowledge it openly. What I do not know: the exact identities of the two men convicted on June 18, the details of the information they transmitted, and the precise identities of the MSS case officers involved. These elements remain sealed under British law.

I also do not know with certainty whether the cases described cover the full scope of the problem or represent a fraction of what is currently underway. Epistemic humility is required: we never see more than the visible tip of the espionage iceberg — and the intelligence services that do see more cannot always share what they know with the public.

Sources

Primary sources

The Straits Times — Two men jailed in Britain for spying for China — June 18, 2026

The Straits Times — Sweden charges man with attempted espionage for Russia — June 2026

Euronews — Trial opens for Swedish army consultant accused of espionage for Russia — June 15, 2026

Secondary sources

El País — China expands its spy networks across the EU and beyond — June 7, 2026

Le Monde — Russia's shadow behind sabotage and espionage attempts on French soil — June 20, 2026

UA News — Arrest in France of suspect for espionage on behalf of Russia — June 2026