LONDON (AP) — President Vladimir Putin is stalling efforts to end Russia’s war on Ukraine, and is testing the West with tactics that fall “just below the threshold of war,” the head of Britain’s MI6 spy agency said Monday.
Blaise Metreweli said Putin is “dragging out negotiations” on stopping the conflict, and remains determined to “subjugate Ukraine and harass NATO members.”
Click to Gallery
The new head of Britain's MI6 Blaise Metreweli makes her first public speech in London, Monday, Dec. 15, 2025. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth,pool)
The new head of Britain's MI6 Blaise Metreweli makes her first public speech in London, Monday, Dec. 15, 2025. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth,pool)
The new head of Britain's MI6 Blaise Metreweli makes her first public speech in London, Monday, Dec. 15, 2025. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth,pool)
The new head of Britain's MI6 Blaise Metreweli makes her first public speech in London, Monday, Dec. 15, 2025. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth,pool)
FILE - A general view of the headquarters of the Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, in London, March 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung, File)
“We are now operating in a space between peace and war,” Metreweli said of the wider global threat landscape in her first public speech since becoming chief of Britain’s foreign intelligence agency two months ago.
Metreweli accused Moscow of sponsoring cyberattacks on other countries’ critical infrastructure, drone incursions around European airports, campaigns of arson, sabotage and disinformation, and “aggressive activities in our seas, above and below the waves.”
“The export of chaos is a feature, not a bug, in this Russian approach to international engagement, and we should be ready for this to continue until Putin is forced to change his calculus,” she said.
Metreweli, 48, is the first woman to head the U.K.’s 116-year-old foreign intelligence service. She gave reporters a rare glimpse inside MI6 headquarters in London, which she noted was “familiar to movie fans everywhere” from the James Bond spy thrillers.
Speaking inside the spy chief’s wood-paneled dining room overlooking the River Thames, she said rapidly evolving technology is rewriting the rules of conflict, while hybrid threats from states and extremist groups mean “the front line is everywhere.”
The speech made a brief reference to China’s “implications for national security,” but Metreweli focused on the threat from an “aggressive, expansionist and revisionist Russia.”
“Russia is testing us in the gray zone with tactics that are just below the threshold of war,” she said.
The warning came amid a flurry of diplomatic meetings aimed at ending the almost four-year war sparked by Russia’s invasion of its neighbor.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was in Berlin Monday to meet U.S. envoys, and will meet later with the leaders of Germany, France and Britain. Kyiv’s allies are trying to bolster support for Ukraine amid Washington’s pressure to swiftly accept a U.S.-brokered peace deal.
The MI6 chief, known as C, is the only employee of the secretive agency whose name is made public. In a speech that, unusually, touched on her personal backstory, Metreweli said that coming “from a family shaped by devastating conflict, I grew up with a deep sense of gratitude for the U.K.’s precious democracy and freedom.”
After Metreweli’s appointment was announced in June, media reported that her grandfather, Constantine Dobrowolski, had been a Nazi spy in Ukraine during World War II.
MI6 said Metreweli never met her grandfather.
Metreweli, who has almost three decades of clandestine service and a background in anthropology, psychology and AI, was previously the MI6 director of technology and innovation — the real-world equivalent of the fictional Bond gadget-master Q.
She said technological savvy and human intelligence are both key to combating “an interlocking web” of security threats, and MI6 officers “must be as comfortable with lines of code as we are with human sources, as fluent in Python as we are in multiple languages.”
“Our world is more dangerous and contested now than it has been for decades,” she said, adding that “we are being contested from sea to space, from the battlefield to the boardroom – and even our brains, as disinformation manipulates our understanding of each other and ourselves.
“The foundations of trust in our societies are eroding. Information, once a unifying force, is increasingly weaponized,” she added.
In a warning to Britain’s adversaries, she said MI6 will “sharpen our edge” and “take calculated risks.” She said the agency should tap into “our historical, SOE instincts,” referring to the clandestine Special Operations Executive that sent agents on daring sabotage missions in Nazi-occupied Europe during World War II.
“We will never stoop to the tactics of our opponents. But we must seek to outplay them,” she said.
The speech is the latest in a series of warnings by Western defense and security authorities about the growing hybrid threat from states such as Russia, Iran and to an extent China, whose use of cyber tools, espionage and influence operations they say threatens global stability.
Last week, the U.K. imposed sanctions on several Russian media outlets for alleged information warfare and two Chinese tech firms for “vast and indiscriminate cyberactivities.”
In a separate speech, the head of the British military, Air Chief Marshal Richard Knighton, will say Monday that Putin’s aim is “to challenge, limit, divide and ultimately destroy NATO.”
“The war in Ukraine shows Putin’s willingness to target neighboring states, including their civilian populations ... threatens the whole of NATO, including the U.K.,” Knighton plans to say, arguing that Britain needs both a stronger military and more resilient infrastructure to meet the evolving threat.
The new head of Britain's MI6 Blaise Metreweli makes her first public speech in London, Monday, Dec. 15, 2025. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth,pool)
The new head of Britain's MI6 Blaise Metreweli makes her first public speech in London, Monday, Dec. 15, 2025. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth,pool)
The new head of Britain's MI6 Blaise Metreweli makes her first public speech in London, Monday, Dec. 15, 2025. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth,pool)
The new head of Britain's MI6 Blaise Metreweli makes her first public speech in London, Monday, Dec. 15, 2025. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth,pool)
FILE - A general view of the headquarters of the Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, in London, March 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung, File)
Two onetime attorneys for President Donald Trump and an aide who all worked on Trump’s 2020 campaign appeared Monday for a preliminary hearing in Wisconsin on felony forgery charges related to a fake elector scheme.
The Wisconsin case is moving forward even as others in the battleground states of Michigan and Georgia have faltered. A special prosecutor last year dropped a federal case alleging Trump conspired to overturn the 2020 election. Another case in Nevada is still alive.
The hearing comes a week after Trump attorney Jim Troupis, one of the three who were charged, tried unsuccessfully to get the judge to step down in the case and have it moved to another county. Troupis, who served one year as a judge in the same county where he was charged, also alleged that all of the judges in Dane County are biased against him and he can’t get a fair trial.
Here's the latest:
The preliminary hearing for one of three former aides to President Trump has been postponed in Wisconsin amid questions about what statements he made to prosecutors could be admitted in court.
The judge said Monday he would set a later date to hold the hearing for Ken Chesebro, an attorney who advised Trump’s campaign.
The preliminary hearing is continuing for two other defendants. They are Jim Troupis, who is Trump’s 2020 campaign attorney in Wisconsin, and Mike Roman, Trump’s director of Election Day operations in 2020.
All three face 11 felony forgery charges related to Trump’s attempt to overturn his 2020 election loss in Wisconsin.
Dane County Circuit Judge John Hyland said he would hold an evidentiary hearing to get more details about comments Chesebro made to Wisconsin investigators and whether they can be admitted in court.
First Assistant United States Attorney Bill Essayli made the announcement during a Los Angeles news conference Monday morning.
He said the defendants are suspected to be members of a “far left, anti-government terrorist organization” called Turtle Island Liberation Front. He said they planned to set off the improvised explosive devices at five businesses in Los Angeles and Orange County on New Year’s Eve.
The four people were each charged with conspiracy and possession of an explosive device and officials intend to file additional charges, Essayli said.
One of the people arrested described the organization as an “anti-capitalist, anti government movement” that calls for associates to “rise up and fight” against capitalism, he said.
Federal authorities on Monday announced the arrests of four alleged members of an extremist group who are suspected of planning coordinated bombing attacks on New Year’s Eve across Southern California.
The suspects were arrested last week in Lucerne Valley, a desert city east of Los Angeles, where they were suspected of preparing to test improvised explosive devices ahead of the planned bombings, according to the federal criminal complaint filed Saturday. They’re members of an offshoot of a pro-Palestinian group dubbed the Turtle Island Liberation Front, the complaint said.
They each face charges including conspiracy and possession of a destructive device, court documents show.
The group is alleged to have been plotting to set off a series of bombings at multiple targets in California beginning on New Year’s Eve and also planned to target Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and vehicles, Attorney General Pam Bondi said on social media.
▶ Read more about the California arrests
It comes as the latest round of talks between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and U.S. envoys ended Monday and as Kyiv faces Washington’s pressure to swiftly accept a U.S.-brokered peace deal while confronting an increasingly assertive Moscow.
Ukraine’s lead negotiator, Rustem Umerov, said on social media that “real progress” had been achieved at the talks in Berlin with President Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner as well as European officials. The talks lasted roughly 90 minutes, after a five-hour session Sunday.
The U.S. government said in a social media post on Witkoff’s account after Sunday’s meeting that “a lot of progress was made.”
The search for possible compromises has run into major obstacles, including control of Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, which is mostly occupied by Russian forces.
▶ Read more about the Russia-Ukraine war
The two Iowa National Guard members who the U.S. military says were killed by the Islamic State Group in Syria on Saturday have been identified, the U.S. Army announced Monday.
The soldiers were Sgt. Edgar Brian Torres-Tovar, 25 of Des Moines, and Sgt. William Nathaniel Howard, 29, from Marshalltown.
The Army said in Monday’s announcement that the incident is under investigation. President Trump said Saturday that “there will be very serious retaliation” for the attack, which also killed an American interpreter.
Onetime attorneys and a former aide to President Trump during the 2020 election are in a Wisconsin court for a preliminary hearing related to charges they face related to a fake elector plan.
The hearing began Monday in a county courthouse just blocks from Wisconsin’s state Capitol where the Republicans met in 2020 in an attempt case the state’s 10 electoral college ballots for Trump even though he’d lost the state.
Former Trump attorneys Jim Troupis and Ken Chesebro and former Trump aide Mike Roman each face 10 felony forgery charges. The judge was deciding Monday whether there was probable cause to take the case to trial.
The Wisconsin case is moving forward even as similar ones in the battleground states of Michigan and Georgia have faltered.
The Trump administration is unrolling a new scholarship competition that will include a televised “civics bee” testing high schoolers on their knowledge of America’s founding.
The Education Department announced its new Presidential 1776 Award on Monday, promising scholarships totaling $250,000 for three winners.
The contest has three rounds: an online test, regional in-person semifinals and a national final in Washington in June.
Education Secretary Linda McMahon says the contest gives students a chance “to push themselves, learn our history, and take pride in the principles that unite us.”
It’s being organized and supported by the James Madison Memorial Fellowship Foundation.
The Trump administration has sought to promote “patriotic education” even as the president works to eliminate the Education Department.
President Trump responded to the reported killing of a Hollywood cultural icon and his wife with a striking political attack on the victims.
In a social media post, Trump said without evidence that Rob Reiner’s death was due to his opposition to Trump and his policies — in Trump’s words, “the anger he caused others through his massive, unyielding, and incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME.”
The Trump administration won’t immediately have to give up control of California National Guard troops it deployed to Los Angeles in June.
A federal judge’s order returning command of the troops to the state was set to take effect Monday, but a federal appeals court put it on hold.
A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals late Friday granted in part a temporary stay sought by the Republican administration while it considers an appeal of the judge’s order.
U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer in San Francisco ruled last week that Trump officials had to relinquish command of the troops and stop deploying them in Los Angeles, but he put the decision on hold until Monday.
The 9th Circuit panel refused to block the second part of the order requiring an end to the troop deployment in Los Angeles, where about a 100 troops remained.
In an extraordinary move, President Donald Trump called up more than 4,000 California National Guard troops in June without Gov. Gavin Newsom’s approval to further the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement efforts. The number had dropped to several hundred by late October, but California remained steadfast in its opposition to Trump’s command of the troops.
The latest round of talks between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and U.S. envoys ended Monday as they and European allies seek an end to Russia’s nearly four-year war.
Special envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law who’s working as an outside adviser, were in the German capital for the peace talks.
The U.S. and Ukrainian delegations, along with European officials, met for about 90 minutes Monday. That follows a five-hour session Sunday.
The U.S. government said in a social media post on Witkoff’s account after Sunday’s meeting that “a lot of progress was made.”
▶ Read more about talks with Ukraine
The fight over California’s new congressional map designed to help Democrats flip congressional House seats will go to court Monday as a panel of federal judges considers whether the district boundaries approved by voters last month can be used in elections.
The hearing in Los Angeles sets the stage for a high-stakes legal and political fight between the Trump administration and Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who’s been eyeing a 2028 presidential run. The lawsuit asks a three-judge panel to grant a temporary restraining order by Dec. 19 — the date candidates can take the first official steps to run in the 2026 election.
Voters approved California’s new U.S. House map in November through Proposition 50. It’s designed to help Democrats flip as many as five congressional House seats in the midterm elections next year. It was Newsom’s response to a Republican-led effort in Texas backed by President Donald Trump.
▶ Read more about California’s redistricting effort
Even though Republican Brian Jack is only a first-term congressman, he has become a regular in the Oval Office these days. As the top recruiter for his party’s House campaign team, the Georgia native is often reviewing polling and biographies of potential candidates with Trump.
Lauren Underwood, an Illinois congresswoman who does similar work for Democrats, has no such West Wing invitation. She is at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue working the phones to identify and counsel candidates she hopes can erase Republicans’ slim House majority in November’s midterm elections.
Although they have little in common, both lawmakers were forged by the lessons of 2018, when Democrats flipped dozens of Republican-held seats to turn the rest of Trump’s first term into a political crucible. Underwood won her race that year, and Jack became responsible for dealing with the fallout when he became White House political director a few months later.
Underwood wants a repeat in 2026, and Jack is trying to stand in her way.
▶ Read more about Underwood and Jack
The Arizona Democrat is emerging as a crucial surrogate for a party desperately seeking to win back the Latino support that slipped in 2024 with the election of President Trump. His fall travels have included trips to New Jersey, Virginia and Florida, where he campaigned for Democrats who went on to win their elections. Strategists say Gallego is flexing his muscle as a rising star for the party while also laying the groundwork for a 2028 presidential run despite not being a household name like California Gov. Gavin Newsom or U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
It’s a role Gallego is expected to continue next year, when Democrats hope to break Republicans’ hold on Congress and counter Trump’s agenda.
“Ruben Gallego is going to be our not-so-secret, secret weapon,” said Maria Cardona, a longtime Democratic operative and member of the Democratic National Committee.
Gallego is among the Democrats named as possible 2028 contenders who had the busiest travel calendar in 2025. He stumped for Democratic female candidates in New Jersey’s and Virginia’s gubernatorial races and Miami’s mayoral race.
▶ Read more about Gallego
Trump said Saturday that “there will be very serious retaliation” after two U.S. service members and one American civilian were killed in an attack in Syria that the United States blames on the Islamic State group.
“This was an ISIS attack against the U.S., and Syria, in a very dangerous part of Syria, that is not fully controlled by them,” he said in a social media post.
The American president told reporters at the White House that Syria’s president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, was “devastated by what happened” and stressed that Syria was fighting alongside U.S. troops. Trump, in his post, said al-Sharaa was “extremely angry and disturbed by this attack.”
U.S. Central Command said three service members were also wounded in the ambush Saturday by a lone IS member in central Syria. Trump said the three “seem to be doing pretty well.” The U.S. military said the gunman was killed in the attack. Syrian officials said the attack wounded members of Syria’s security forces as well.
▶ Read more about the attack
Two onetime attorneys for President Donald Trump and an aide who all worked on Trump’s 2020 campaign were scheduled to appear Monday for a preliminary hearing in Wisconsin on felony forgery charges related to a fake elector scheme.
The hearing on Monday comes a week after Trump attorney Jim Troupis, one of the three who were charged, tried unsuccessfully to get the judge to step down in the case and have it moved to another county. Troupis, who was joined by the other two defendants in his motion, alleged that the judge did not write a previous order issued in August declining to dismiss the case. Instead, he accused the father of the judge’s law clerk, who was a retired judge, of actually writing the opinion.
Troupis, who served one year as a judge in the same county where he was charged, also alleged that all of the judges in Dane County are biased against him and he can’t get a fair trial.
▶ Read more about the hearing
President Donald Trump talks to reporters as arrives on the South Lawn of the White House, Saturday, Dec. 13, 2025, after attending the Army-Navy game. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
President Donald Trump talks to reporters as he departs from the South Lawn of the White House, Saturday, Dec. 13, 2025, in Washington, en route to Baltimore to attend the Army-Navy football game. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
