Britain’s Security Service, MI5, has warned that while Vladimir Putin will win back the presidency in Russia’s next month (March) election, ensuring he serves two six-year terms, he will “significantly increase Russian intelligence operations against the United Kingdom”.

Russia is now listed alongside China as posing a cyber threat to Britain. MI5 is now part of a £ 650 million defence system that stretches into space from GCHQ, the UK “spy in space” headquarters south-west of London.

Russia’s cyber theft headquarters has been traced south-east of Moscow in a birch wood forest at Yasenov. Within its heavily guarded complex is a dacha where Vladimir Putin used to stay when he was head of the KGB and went hunting in the surrounding forests. Now the villa is living quarters for his cyber spies using their skills to try and penetrate Britain’s computer systems.

Jonathan Evans, the director-general of MI5 has said that Russian espionage operations in Britain “which already exceed those during the Cold War have already increased this year against our military technology”. Last December over 800 attempts were logged.

MI5 has established the Russia’s foreign intelligence service, SVR, has created a special directorate known as “Line PR” which operates out of the Russian Embassy in London.

Already one of its members, Mikhail Viktorovich Repin, the mission’s Third Secretary, was expelled in December for spying. He arrived in London in the wake of the murder of Alexander Litivenko, the dissident former KGB officer.

It is an open secret Putin has continued to use Russian intelligence services to keep a grasp on the Kremlin as he prepares to contest the coming March presidential election. He has been in power as either president or prime minister since 2000.

A Russian martial arts fighter – he has a black belt in Judo – he has slushy songs penned in his honour and a clad fan club called “The Army of Putin” who drink a best-selling vodka named after him. Regularly state television show reports of Putin stripped to the waist, fishing, hunting, swimming in icy rivers or riding bare back on his favourite stallion.

MI5 are convinced he has hand-picked the “Line PR” team to cultivate politicians and senior Whitehall officials in Britain.

“Working undercover as diplomats they attend events at the International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS) and the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI). An annual fee of a few hundred pounds provides them access to lectures by senior military and intelligence officials. This overt information gathering is often the first step in identifying potential targets for cultivation”, a MI5 report has warned.

The Security Service A Branch, which keeps Russian diplomats under surveillance has expanded to keep track of what MI5 believes are over 50 Russian spies in Britain.

In his regular briefing to Prime Minister David Cameron, intelligence chief Evans warned that since the Euro Crisis Russian spies are briefed to track government policies on the European Community and Nato.

Their activities come at a time when the Russian economy is in good shape, especially when compared to many of the debt-laden European states.

“The Kremlin is hoarding the world’s largest foreign currency reserves and Russia is not running a budget deficit”, Evans has briefed Cameron.

MI5 analysts believe that it is to maintain that position that has led Putin ordering an increase of spying on the UK.

It comes in the wake of an espionage case involving Katia Zatuliveter. The 26 year old Russian was a parliamentary researcher for Michael Hancock, a member of the House of Commons defence committee. MI5 had asked the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC) to expel her on National Security Grounds.

MI5 lawyers had argued that she was a spy recruited at University in St Petersburg and tasked to target Hancock and other potential targets in Parliament through his defence contacts.

During the case SIAC heard Zatuliveter had been targeted by an intelligence officer from the Russian embassy known as “Boris”. He has met her at the House of Commons.

The SIAC heard evidence from MI5 lawyers that Zatuliveter had sexual relationships with Michael Hancock and several older men, including a Nato official and a Dutch diplomat.

Nevertheless, SIAC refused to order her to be deported on “insufficient grounds”.

Shortly after the MI6 spy, Gareth Williams was found dead in a padlocked sports bag in a Central London apartment used as a safe house by MI5, Boris was recalled to Moscow.

The Security Service has not ruled out Williams was murdered “by foreign intelligence service”. He had been working on a new defence system against cyber attacks.