The Czechoslovak secret agent who met Jeremy Corbyn during the Eighties claimed last night that the Labour leader knew he was a spy and said the MP had supplied information to the Communist regime.

Special counsel Robert Mueller on Friday filed his first criminal charges against Russian nationals and businesses in his investigation of Russian government influence in the 2016 election and collusion with the presidential campaign of then-candidate Donald Trump. The defendants are accused of working in conjunction with the St. Petersburg-based Internet Research Agency, which is also under indictment for allegedly conducting information operations to influence the 2016 election in the United States.

Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte is not an autocrat and is taking seriously a report by the U.S. intelligence community that names the firebrand leader among the threats to democracy in Southeast Asia, his spokesman said on Wednesday. The report, produced by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, places Duterte alongside Cambodia's Hun Sen, the Rohingya crisis and Thailand's military-backed constitution as impediments to democracy.

Presidential son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner has had his security clearance downgraded — a move that will prevent him from viewing many of the sensitive documents to which he once had unfettered access. Kushner is not alone. All White House aides working on the highest-level interim clearances — at the Top Secret/SCI-level — were informed in a memo sent Friday that their clearances would be downgraded to the Secret level, according to three people with knowledge of the situation.

A self-described Russian "seductress" is asking for US help to escape a Thai detention center in exchange for information on alleged links between US President Donald Trump and Russia, according to her Instagram account. Anastasia Vashukevich, who also goes by the name Nastya Rybka, says she's being held in Thailand after being arrested on February 26, along with nine other Russians, in the city of Pattaya for running so-called "sex training" sessions.

U.S. Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats said on Tuesday he had not seen evidence of Russia trying to meddle in the 2018 U.S. midterm elections, but it is "highly likely" Moscow will try to do so. "We have not seen evidence of a robust effort yet on the part of Russia, but we know their malign activities continue to exist," Coats told a Senate armed services committee hearing.

Russia has said it successfully launched a hypersonic missile described by Vladimir Putin as an ideal weapon when he unveiled new armaments earlier this month. The Kinzhal missile was launched from a MiG-31 aircraft that took off from an airfield in south-western Russia, the defence ministry said. “The launch went according to plan: the hypersonic missile hit its target,” the ministry said.

The clock is ticking towards the British-set deadline of midnight Tuesday for the Kremlin to explain why a Russian developed military-grade nerve agent was used to poison a former Russian double agent and his daughter in a small cathedral town in south England. No one in the British government is holding their breath for a Russian response — or an adequate one, from London’s point of view.

Russia's EU ambassador has suggested a UK research laboratory could be the source of the nerve agent used in the attack on an ex-spy and his daughter. Vladimir Chizhov told the BBC's Andrew Marr Show Russia had "nothing to do" with the poisoning in Salisbury of Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia. He said Russia did not stockpile the poison and that the Porton Down lab was only eight miles (12km) from the city.

The former Russian double agent left close to death after a nerve agent attack in Salisbury had written to President Vladimir Putin asking to be pardoned and to be allowed to visit his home country, a friend has claimed. Vladimir Timoshkov, a friend of Sergei Skripal, said he regretted having spied for the British and wanted to return to Russia to visit his family. In 2006 Colonel Skripal was jailed by the Russian for selling secrets to MI6 and came to Britain in 2010 as part of a spy swap, setting up home in Salisbury.

The suspect was in contact with Russian intelligence officers working under diplomatic cover at the Russian embassy in Warsaw, according to TVP. The man was detained by Poland’s Internal Security Agency (ABW) last Friday in an operation coordinated with the security services of other European Union countries, TVP reported.

The author of the famous Trump dossier provided a secret report to the FBI asserting that RT founder Mikhail Lesin was bludgeoned to death by thugs hired by an oligarch close to Putin. Three other sources independently told the FBI the same basic story, contradicting the government’s finding that Lesin’s death was accidental.

Nato is expelling seven Russian diplomats in response to a nerve agent attack in the UK. The international security organisation's chief said the move would send a message to Russia that there are "costs and consequences" for its behaviour. Twenty-six countries have expelled Russian envoys in the past two days, in solidarity with the UK. They all believe Russia was behind the poisoning of two people in Salisbury.

The United States has warned that former Russian double agents who were swapped to the West for Russian spies could face danger in the wake of the poisoning of an ex-agent in Britain. Britain blames Russia for the poisoning of ex-spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in England last month, triggering mutual diplomatic expulsions. Skripal is one of four Russians convicted of betraying Moscow for the West who were exchanged for 10 Russian agents in 2010.

President Donald Trump's policy toward Russia has puzzled world leaders and amused officials in Moscow, according to the former ambassador to the states that succeeded the Soviet Union in the 1990s. Stephen Sestanovich, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and the former ambassador-at-large for the ex-USSR states, told The New York Times on Tuesday that "Trump seems to think that if he accepts what his advisers recommend on even days of the month and rejects their recommendations on odd days, the result will be a strategy."

CIA officers working overseas used to expect to be followed after hours by adversarial spies hoping to find their sources. But now, foreign spies often don't need to bother because technology can do it for them, said Dawn Meyerriecks, deputy director of the CIA's science and technology division. Digital surveillance, including closed-circuit television and wireless infrastructure, in about 30 countries is so good that physical tracking is no longer necessary, Meyerriecks told the audience at an intelligence conference in Tampa, Florida, on Sunday.

The U.S. Navy’s Second Fleet will be sent to the North Atlantic Ocean again as the Pentagon plots ways to combat Russia’s revanchist tendencies.With a resurgent Russia, the U.S. announced Friday that it will re-establish a fleet of its Navy that it abolished nearly seven years ago as a cost-cutting measure. The U.S. Navy’s Second Fleet will be sent to the North Atlantic Ocean again, as the Pentagon plots ways to combat Russia’s revanchist tendencies. According to the Pentagon, the Second Fleet will now have operational and administrative control over ships, aircraft and landing forces on the East Coast and the northern Atlantic Ocean.

A Russian oligarch funneled money to Michael Cohen, gaining kompromat. And Trump’s GOP allies are doing everything they can to keep their secrets.

Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee released thousands of Russian Facebook ads on Thursday, offering the public its first in-depth look at the troubling messages used to heighten tensions among Americans during and after the 2016 U.S. presidential election. The release of the ads, which Facebook says were purchased by the Kremlin-linked Internet Research Agency to sway public sentiment, comes as the giant social network races to tighten...

President Trump’s personal attorney Michael Cohen worked on a deal to try and build a Trump Tower in Moscow for months longer than he had told Congress, Yahoo News reported Wednesday. The site reported that Cohen told lawmakers that he had stopped working on the project in January 2016 when he decided the “proposal was not feasible for a variety of business reasons and should not be pursued further.”