UK llama a los veteranos de la Guerra Fría por falta de traductores rusos

Britain calls up Dad's Army of spies to watch Russia
Military intelligence chiefs have been re-recruiting Cold War veterans and retired linguists because of a lack of Russian skills to deal with the Ukraine crisis


A Royal Air Force Typhoon FGR4 aircraft. Britain has sent four Typhoon fighters to bolster air policing 

The Telegraph

Defence chiefs are being forced to call up a “Dad’s Army” of retired military intelligence officers because the crisis in Ukraine has exposed a shortage of Russian speakers in the Armed Forces.
Senior military intelligence staff have been trawling veterans’ groups seeking former Russia experts and asking for their help, according to documents seen by The Telegraph.
Security sources said defence cuts, recent focus on the Middle East and Asia, and resurgent Cold War threats had exposed the shortage of expertise and left commanders scrambling to approach former experts, who are now in their 60s.
One recent memo from a senior officer in a military intelligence brigade calls on former colleagues to help in the search for retired Russian speakers because they need their “insights”.
The Nato allies have struggled to decide how to respond to the Ukraine crisis at a time when defence budgets have been significantly cut across the board.


Poland and the Baltic states fear more Russia aggression after the Kremlin’s annexation of Crimea and have appealed for a show of military strength from Nato. Barak Obama said last week he will create a $1 billion fund to bolster troop deployments in Eastern Europe.
Britain has sent four Typhoon fighters to bolster air policing and offered an armoured battle group for Nato exercises.
An intelligence source said: “Britain no longer has the capability to deal with the Russian threat and everybody in the business knows it.
“The Ministry of Defence ran extremely good long Russian and Arabic courses for intelligence staff.
“But after 9/11 Arabic took precedence and Russian and other languages became ignored.
“This accompanied by the alarming resurgence of Cold War threats and deep defence cuts has damaged Britain’s all round intelligence capabilities and caused a shortfall.”
As the Cold War ended and focus moved to Iraq, Afghanistan and the Middle East, Russian speakers complain they came to be openly derided as nothing more than a “language club”.
Many of the Russian linguists and analysts in former intelligence units were axed in Army cuts brought about by the MoD after 2004.
A secretive MoD research and assessment branch at Shrivenham, where experts had produced well respected analysis on Russia and Eastern Europe, was disbanded in 2010 despite protests from diplomats and the intelligence community.
As well as analysis, the military is understood to need people to monitor and translate Russian media and communications.
The Commons’ defence select committee earlier this year warned that a lack of intelligence experts was one of the biggest manning shortages affecting the Armed Forces. MPs said there were more than 700 intelligence vacancies in the military.
Moscow’s tactics in destabilising eastern Ukraine by using special forces, supporting pro-Russian separatists and using online propaganda and social media have made the need for intelligence expertise more acute.
One source said: “All these changes require huge efforts by military intelligence to anticipate what Putin’s next moves will be.
“Some of these potential re-recruits furthermore, despite their language abilities, are likely to be approaching their 70s and have been out of the intelligence network for many years.”
An MoD Spokesman said: “We work to ensure that the UK Armed Forces are able to respond to emerging threats which includes having a wide range of language training on offer at any one time.
“As a leading member of Nato, the UK is playing a key role in reassuring our allies in Eastern Europe in the wake of the crisis in Ukraine, underlined by the deployment of RAF Typhoon aircraft to Lithuania and our involvement in current and planned military exercises in the region.”