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George Stephenson Place, Surrey Research Park

Recognised as one of the most prestigious science parks in the UK, Surrey Research Park is a 70-acre site home to high-tech & R&D industries.

The Park is situated on the outskirts of Guildford town, close to the University of Surrey and next to the Royal Surrey County Hospital; it is 10 miles from the M25 (JUNC. 10) and 1 mile from the A3 (T) road. London Heathrow Airport is just 23 miles from the Park, and London Gatwick Airport is approx. 35 miles away (50 mins drive time). Guildford mainline railway station is 2 miles away, providing regular direct services to London Waterloo (35 mins) and Reading (30 mins).

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Property description

Building B: VRV comfort cooling, suspended ceilings, LG7 accessible lighting, fully-accessed raised floors, 10 person passenger lift, flexibility for installation of lab / research facilities, generous parking provision at 1:220 sq ft., DDA compliant, BREEAM very good.

Building D: High quality fully-fitted offices, 8m eaves height, 2 roller shutter doors, floor loading of 7.5KN/sqm.., ‘powerfloat’ concrete floors, DDA compliant, BREEAM very good, 52 parking spaces.

On-site facilities and easily accessible amenities include: 24 hr security, café/ restaurant, 24hr Superstore, hotel, new Surrey Sports Park with gym and swimming pool.

Address: The Surrey Research Park, 30 Frederick Sanger Road, Guildford, Surrey, GU2 7EF

Industry focus: Technology, science & engineering incl: 5G, Cyber security, Creative media technologies, Space & satellite technologies.

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Surrey Research Park

The surrey research park.

Surrey Technology Centre 40 Occam Road Guildford, Surrey GU2 7YG

VISIT WEBSITE

The Surrey Research Park is wholly owned by the University of Surrey’s Foundation Fund.

Introduction

The Surrey Research Park is a major centre of excellence in technology, science and engineering, and is widely regarded as the best of its kind in the UK.  The Research Park is owned, developed and managed by The University of Surrey and is close to its campus in Guildford.  The 70 acre (28.33 ha) low density development provides a high quality working environment, with room for further expansion.  Over 150 companies are currently located in 30 buildings on the Park, are engaged in a broad spectrum of research, development and design activities across a range of technologies.

The Surrey Research Park is the first Science Park to have undergone the newly formed UKSPA ASPIRE performance review process, and received an outstanding report. This revealed that the Park contributes an estimated annual contribution to the regional economy of between £450m and £625 million. This has been endorsed with a figure from a wider study of the contribution of the Park’s host University of £1.4bn GVA annually of which the Park in 2012 contributed £450m of this addition to the economy. Companies on the Park have been responsible for a substantial increase in employment in knowledge based sectors of the economy in Guildford and Surrey as a whole.  Today the Park has a net asset value which exceeds £100m.

History and Objectives

The Park was one of the founders of the UKSPA in 1984. After an initial period of planning, construction on the site began in January 1984 and the first occupier moved to the site in 1985, when the Surrey Technology Centre Incubator opened.

In developing The Surrey Research Park, the University of Surrey has five clear objectives which complement its existing industry/University links.  These are:

• To assist with the economic development of the national, regional and local economy
• To raise the profile and international reputation of the University of Surrey and Guildford as a centre of excellence in technology
•  To create an opportunity for technology transfer by strengthening the links between the University and industry
• To help European-based industry maintain its competitive edge through fostering innovation
• To create independent income for the University of Surrey and to create an opportunity for academic staff to act as consultants to companies on the Park.

To achieve these objectives the University has built appropriate accommodation for small, medium and large technology companies. The Surrey Technology Centre offers both pre- and full incubation as well as operating as a business centre for innovative technology companies. The incubation offer is part of the SETsquared consortium, which has been selected as the most successful incubator in the World assessed by UBI Index.

Progress to Date

The diverse range of companies on the Park are active in innovation in science which involves discovery in inventing new products,  engineering that involves part science and part problem solving, and customer focused innovation which addresses customer needs, products and services and business models.   In addition, efficiency driven innovation requires developing new ideas that save time, production costs and delivery of goods.  The companies operating on the Park help to create a powerful engine of innovation providing a significant level of economic activity and pioneering output.

The Surrey Technology Centre – Incubator/Startup Building

The centre is a 7,400 square metre, two-storey building which offers 78 fully-serviced units from 15 square metres, which are available to occupiers with the primary objective of helping to drive technology up the value chain and to create wealth through its exploitation.  These units provide tenants with a range of business support services including an excellent broadband connection, reception service, telephone system and access to meeting rooms.  The building also offers a range of business development services which are part of the incubation programme.  Around 40% of the current tenants in other buildings on the Surrey Research Park graduated from this building.

Guildford is in the county town of Surrey and a regional centre for business, education, shopping, culture and leisure.  Over the past twenty years Guildford has emerged as a strong and successful commercial and technology centre in its own right. It is located 30 miles to the south west of London, at a point where north/south and east/west routes intersect, and is at the centre of a comprehensive communication network, which is highly accessible to UK, European and world markets. Central London is connected to Guildford by excellent road and rail links. It has easy access to London Heathrow and Gatwick Airports.

Site Management Arrangements

The Research Park is a private estate which has been funded and developed by the University of Surrey and is managed by the University of Surrey’s dedicated Research Park team. Some units are leased on fully insuring leases, others are on short licences and in these cases the management is the responsibility of the University. The University of Surrey provides automatic membership of the University Library and access to other University facilities through occupation of the site.

The Park has been ducted to enable buildings to be linked with a private network and offers tenants access to superfast broadband services.

The Park’s management team works closely with the University’s Technology Transfer Office (Research and Enterprise Support) that has been awarded government funds for supporting business acceleration services for tenants.

University of Surrey and its Facilities

The University is organised into a number of academic faculties that include the following:

• Facility for Arts and Social Sciences
• Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences
• Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences

Together these faculties are responsible for an extensive research portfolio and teaching around 16,000 students.

Surrey is one of Britain’s leading technological universities, having been voted the Guardian University of the Year 2016.  The teaching and research emphasis is towards science, engineering, technology, social sciences as well as offering courses in a business school. The University is committed to collaborating with industry as well as providing academic excellence.

Close links are maintained with industry through contracts and annual placement of undergraduates on their industrial and professional training year, which is part of the degree programme offered by the University. The University is successful in attracting research funds from industry.

Contact with tenant companies includes active participation in research contracts, consultancy and personnel exchange. The latter includes:

• project work with students
• sandwich course or co-op programme students taking placements  with companies onthe site
• graduate employment that retains this human capital in the local labour market
• training and exchanging employees between companies on the Park
• collaborative research activities.

So cial and Recreational Facilities

The University and Guildford have much to offer in drama, music, fine art, film, literature and other activities which contribute to the intellectual and cultural life of the community. The University offers sports facilities for a wide range of activities and the £38 million Surrey Sports Park is a major attraction and welcomes participation by the companies on the Surrey Research Park.

In addition, Guildford, as one of Britain’s major retail centres, offers a range of housing and attracts a number of existing “acts” to the G-Live Civic Centre.  The town centre and Guildford Station is easily accessible from the Park by car and a very frequent bus service.  There are at least four fast trains an hour from Guildford Station to London.

Collaborative Sciences

The access to general purpose technologies, an increasing number of investors and a breadth of skills from the University’s graduates and past graduates increase competition in many technology sectors.  To drive innovation forward there is an observable trend towards entrepreneurs driving more deeply into earlier stages of technology readiness on which to develop technology business.

To ensure this the University of Surrey Tech Transfer Office continues to develop its relationship with technology entrepreneurs and tenant companies to assess the commercial potential of commercial opportunities, it has improved access to the University of Surrey Business School, and runs a number of important events through SETsquared to link entrepreneurs to the University’s research base.  This is enhanced through student placement, academic research activities and support for access to Innovate UK and investor funding.

Surrey Technology Centre

The Surrey Technology Centre provides space for small technology (research, development and design) companies in one of the most prestigious Science Parks in the UK and Western Europe.

Units ranging in size from 120 to 880 square feet (11 – 82 sq.m) are fitted to quality office standards with carpet, air conditioning (heating and cooling), telephony system, broadband service, lighting and a 13 amp single phase ring main. Units may also be adapted to create wet or dry laboratories for some technologies.

All offices lead off from spacious central corridors with access control.

Each unit is serviced to assist new businesses by releasing companies from both the task of managing property and the burden of providing such facilities as an internet connections,fax, photocopier, postal services and a telephone system.

Occupiers therefore have an excellent opportunity to start a business or develop an existing business in a prestigious environment without some of the significant costs associated with a start up position.

For more information on The Surrey Technology Centre follow the   link.

For more information on current lettings click   here .

Faraday Court

Faraday Court benefits from a high degree of prominence, fronting onto the main ring road around the Park. The rear of the site is screened by mature woodland providing an outstanding business setting.

For more information on developing a site at Faraday Court follow the   link .

George Stephenson Place

George Stephenson Place is located adjacent to the northern feature lake and with its western boundary screened by natural woodland, provides a scenic and tranquil backdrop to the buildings.

For more information on developing a site at Faraday Court follow the  link .

Surrey Research Park Annual Review 2022: Reflection and Outlook

Jan 11, 2023

This has been a positive year for Surrey Research Park (SRP) and our businesses despite a challenging external environment, and we have advanced the SRP agenda on multiple fronts. We continued with high occupancy, averaging 97%, throughout the year. We enabled several...

Surrey Research Park companies win big at Surrey Business Awards

Nov 10, 2022

The winners of the 2022 Surrey Awards have been revealed at a spectacular ceremony at the G Live Theatre in Guildford and five companies from Surrey Research Park scooped almost a third of the prizes. The prestigious black-tie event took place recently and recognised...

The Journey to Net Zero

Sep 29, 2022

The United Kingdom Science Park Association (UKSPA) held its Autumn conference in the beautiful Charnwood Life Science Campus in Loughborough.  Sustainability was a key topic, with over 150 attendees for the panel discussion on the “journey to...

UKC3 recognise Surrey as a cyber security cluster

Jun 24, 2022

The UK Cyber Cluster Collaboration (UKC3) have officially recognised the county of Surrey as a cluster within the cyber security sector, following their application in May 2022. This accolade supports the growing success and prestige of the sector across the region...

World’s first pop-up mini solar car park and EV charging hub launched at Surrey Research Park

May 27, 2022

3ti, the team behind the UK’s largest solar car parks, has launched Papilio3, a pop-up mini solar car park, deployable in 24 hours and manufactured in the UK from recycled shipping containers.Papilio3 is a modular unit providing up to 12 fast EV charge points,...

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The Surrey Research Park: A Case Study of Strategic Planning for Economic Development

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The development of the Surrey Research Park by the University of Surrey is an addition to a number of existing strategies to collaborate with industry that it has developed over its 120-year history. The potential to undertake this development was based on owning a substantial land holding that the University acquired when the Borough Council for the town of Guildford invited the University to relocate from Battersea in London to its new location in 1966. Initial plans for the Park in 1979 were accelerated in 1981 in response to plans by the government to reduce funding for Higher Education in the UK. Beyond a broad master plan for the site that was based on topography and access to the site the plans that were developed were based on a survey of 100 companies that were deemed to be in the target market for the site and a review of the other seven science parks that were being developed in the UK in 1981. The findings from this proved to be important in developing the master plan for the site. Another important influence on the project were the objectives that were defined for the three stakeholders in the project. Those for the University included commercial potential, knowledge transfer and image and reputation; those for the town primarily related to economic development and the plan was to help tenants gain a competitive advantage by locating on the site. In addition a number of success indicators were defined for the project against which to measure performance and have remained as a useful set of parameters on which to base the assessment of the performance of the site. The chapter sets details about the history of the park and covers the success indicators and factors and reviews these in the context of the original objectives for the site.

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Parry, M. (2014). The Surrey Research Park: A Case Study of Strategic Planning for Economic Development. In: Oh, DS., Phillips, F. (eds) Technopolis. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-5508-9_17

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Once a Sheriff’s Deputy in Florida, Now a Source of Disinformation From Russia

In 2016, Russia used an army of trolls to interfere in the U.S. presidential election. This year, an American given asylum in Moscow may be accomplishing much the same thing all by himself.

By Steven Lee Myers

Steven Lee Myers spoke to more than a dozen researchers and government officials for this article.

A dozen years ago, John Mark Dougan, a former deputy sheriff in Palm Beach County, Fla., sent voters an email posing as a county commissioner, urging them to oppose the re-election of the county’s sheriff.

Listen to this article with reporter commentary

He later masqueraded online as a Russian tech worker with a pseudonym, BadVolf, to leak confidential information in violation of state law, fooling officials in Florida who thought they were dealing with a foreigner.

He also posed as a fictional New York City heiress he called Jessica, tricking an adviser to the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office into divulging improper conduct by the department.

“And boy, did he ever spill ALL of the beans,” Mr. Dougan said in a written response to questions for this article, in which he confirmed his role in these episodes.

Those subterfuges in the United States, it turned out, were only a prelude to a more prominent and potentially more ominous campaign of deception he has been conducting from Russia.

Mr. Dougan, 51, who received political asylum in Moscow, is now a key player in Russia’s disinformation operations against the West. Back in 2016, when the Kremlin interfered in the American presidential election, an army of computer trolls toiled for hours in an office building in St. Petersburg to try to fool Americans online.

Today Mr. Dougan may be accomplishing much the same task largely by himself, according to American and European government officials and researchers from companies and organizations that have tracked his activities since August. The groups include NewsGuard, a company that reviews the reliability of news and information online; Recorded Future, a threat intelligence company; and Clemson University’s Media Forensics Hub.

Working from an apartment crowded with servers and other computer equipment, Mr. Dougan has built an ever-growing network of more than 160 fake websites that mimic news outlets in the United States, Britain and France.

With the help of commercially available artificial intelligence tools, including OpenAI’s ChatGPT and DALL-E 3, he has filled the sites with tens of thousands of articles, many based on actual news events. Interspersed among them are also bespoke fabrications that officials in the United States and European Union have attributed to Russian intelligence agencies or the administration of President Vladimir V. Putin.

Between September and May, Mr. Dougan’s outlets have been cited or referred to in news articles or social media posts nearly 8,000 times, and seen by more than 37 million people in 16 languages, according to a report released Wednesday by NewsGuard .

The fakes have recently included a baseless article on a fake San Francisco Chronicle website that said Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, had smuggled 300 kilograms of cocaine from Argentina. Another false narrative appeared last month in the sham Chronicle and on another site, called The Boston Times, claiming that the C.I.A. was working with Ukrainians to undermine Donald J. Trump’s presidential campaign.

Mr. Dougan, in a series of text exchanges and one telephone interview with The New York Times, denied operating the sites. A digital trail of clues, including web domains and internet protocol addresses, suggests otherwise, the officials and researchers say.

A friend in Florida who has known Mr. Dougan for 20 years, Jose Lambiet, also said in a telephone interview that Mr. Dougan told him in January that he had created the sites.

Steven Brill, a founder of NewsGuard, which has spent months tracking Mr. Dougan’s work, said he represented “a massive incursion into the American news ecosystem.”

“It’s not just some guy sitting in his basement in New Jersey tapping out a phony website,” he added.

Mr. Dougan’s emergence as a weapon of the Kremlin’s propaganda war follows a troubled life in the United States that included home foreclosures and bankruptcy. As a law enforcement officer in Florida and Maine, he faced accusations of excessive use of force and sexual harassment that resulted in costly lawsuits against the departments he worked for.

He faces an arrest warrant in Florida — its records sealed by court order — on 21 felony charges of extortion and wiretapping that resulted from a long-running feud with the sheriff of Palm Beach County.

Mr. Dougan’s activities from Moscow, where he fled in 2016 one step ahead of those charges, continue to draw scrutiny from the authorities in the United States. Last year, he impersonated an F.B.I. agent in a telephone call to Mr. Brill, according to an account by Mr. Brill to be published next week in a new book, “The Death of Truth.”

Mr. Dougan, who acknowledged making the call in a text message this week, had been angered by a NewsGuard report in February 2023 that criticized YouTube for allowing videos parroting Russian propaganda about the war in Ukraine, including some by Mr. Dougan.

In a rambling, profanity-laced video in response on YouTube last year, Mr. Dougan posted excerpts from the call with Mr. Brill and showed a Google Earth satellite photograph of his home in Westchester County, a suburb of New York City — “just down the road from the Clinton crime family,” as Mr. Dougan put it, referring to the home of former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

The call prompted an F.B.I. investigation that, according to Mr. Brill, traced the call to Mr. Dougan’s telephone in Russia. (A spokeswoman for the bureau did not respond to a request for comment on the investigation or Mr. Dougan’s previous activities.)

A History in Law Enforcement

Mr. Dougan began to hone the skills that he is putting to use today during a turbulent childhood in the United States. In the written responses to questions for this article, he said he had struggled at home and in school, bullied because of Tourette’s syndrome, but found a passion in computers. When he was 8, he said, the man who would become his stepfather began teaching him to write computer code.

“By the time I was 16,” he wrote in one response, “I knew a dozen different programming languages.”

After a four-year stint in the Marine Corps, which he claims he offered to join in lieu of a jail sentence for fleeing a police stop for speeding on a motorcycle, he became a police officer first in a small force in Mangonia Park, Fla., and then the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office from 2005 to 2009.

According to news reports and his own accounts over the years, Mr. Dougan repeatedly clashed with superiors and colleagues, facing numerous internal investigations that he said were retaliatory because he objected to police misconduct, including instances of racial bias.

In 2009, he moved briefly to Windham, Maine, to work in another small-town police department. There he faced a complaint of sexual harassment that resulted in his dismissal before he completed his probationary period.

Mr. Dougan started a website called WindhamTalk to defend himself. The website foreshadowed others he would create, including one devoted to the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office, PBSOTalk.

After moving back to Florida, he used PBSOTalk to torment in particular the department’s elected sheriff, Ric L. Bradshaw, whom he accused of corruption. He posted the unlawful recordings of “Jessica” chatting with a former detective commander, Mark Lewis, who, Mr. Dougan claimed, was investigating the sheriff’s critics, including himself. As Mr. Dougan acknowledged in a video interview last year, it is illegal in Florida to record a telephone conversation without permission.

In a statement, a spokeswoman for the Sheriff’s Office, Therese C. Barbera, said Mr. Dougan was “a wanted felon for cyberstalking using unsubstantiated and fabricated claims that have NO factual basis.”

In February 2016, PBSOTalk posted confidential information about thousands of police officers, federal agents and judges. The next month, F.B.I. agents and local police officers searched Mr. Dougan’s home, seizing all of his electronic equipment.

Fearing arrest, he said, he made his way to Canada and caught a flight to Moscow. He was indicted on the 21 Florida felony charges the next year.

Peddling Russia Propaganda

In Russia, Mr. Dougan refashioned himself as a kind of journalist, documenting his travels around the country, including Lake Baikal in Siberia and Crimea, the peninsula in Ukraine that Russia annexed in 2014 in violation of international law.

He posted photographs and videos from those trips on YouTube, which suspended his channel after NewsGuard’s report last year. He also appeared regularly on state media, including with two former intelligence operatives, Maria Butina , who penetrated Republican political circles, and Anna Chapman , one of 10 spies who inspired the television series “The Americans.”

In 2021, as Mr. Putin began mobilizing the military forces that would invade Ukraine, Mr. Dougan posted a video that the Kremlin would cite as one justification for its attack. In it, he claimed that the United States operated biological weapons factories in Ukraine, an accusation that Russia and its allies have pushed without ever providing evidence .

Once the war started, Mr. Dougan recounted in his written responses to questions, he traveled to Ukraine 14 times to report from the Russian side of the front lines. He appeared in Russian government hearings purporting to expose Ukraine’s transgressions, indicating some level of cooperation with the government authorities.

He has faced criticism for the reports, including in a profile in The Daily Beast, that he posted on YouTube and other platforms. Mr. Dougan has portrayed the war much as Russia’s propaganda has: as a righteous battle against neo-Nazis backed by a decadent West, led by the United States and NATO.

“The West has consistently lied about every aspect of this conflict,” he wrote. “Why does only one side get to tell their story?”

Fake News Sites in the U.S.

In April 2021, Mr. Dougan revived a website called DC Weekly, which had been created four years earlier and published fake articles about the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office. According to a report last December by Clemson’s Media Forensics Hub, the domain and internet protocol address were shared by PBSOTalk and Mr. Dougan’s personal website, as well as two marketing books he wrote in exile and a security firm he operated, Falcon Eye Tech, which offered “offshore security monitoring services.”

After Russia’s assault on Ukraine began in 2022, the site carried articles about the war.

Then, last August, the site began to publish articles based on elaborate fabrications that the Western government officials and disinformation researchers said came from Russia’s propaganda units. They often appeared first in videos or audio recordings on obscure X accounts or YouTube channels, then spread to sites like DC Weekly and then to Russian state media as if they were authentic accusations, a process researchers call “narrative laundering.”

The baseless narratives included claims that relatives or cronies of Ukraine’s leader secretly bought luxury properties, yachts or jewelry, and that Prince Andrew, the brother of King Charles III of Britain, had abducted and abused children during a secret visit to Ukraine.

Dozens of new sites have appeared in recent months. They included ones made to look like local news outlets: The Chicago Chronicle, The Miami Chronicle, The Boston Times, The Flagstaff Post and The Houston Post. Some hijacked names of actual news organizations, like The San Francisco Chronicle, or approximated them, in the case of one called The New York News Daily.

When The New York Times reported on the new sites in March, DC Weekly published a lengthy response in a stilted style that indicated the use of artificial intelligence. It was written under the name Jessica Devlin, one of the fictitious journalists on the site. “I’m not a shadowy foreign actor,” the article said.

At the end, the article invited media inquiries at an email address with the domain Falcon Eye Tech.

Two days later, Mr. Dougan answered.

103 New Sites in Two Days

Mr. Dougan, who became a Russian citizen last year and voted in the country’s presidential election in March, said in his messages to The Times that he made a living by selling security devices he designed for a manufacturer in China. He denied being paid by any Russian authorities, claiming he funds his activities himself.

His friend Mr. Lambiet, a private investigator and former journalist, said he considered Mr. Dougan a good man but cautioned that Mr. Dougan had a propensity to make things up. “He’s like a Russian disinformation campaign: It’s hard to know what’s true and what’s not,” he said.

As evidence of Mr. Dougan’s role in the news sites has emerged, he has shifted tactics. Recorded Future, the threat intelligence company, released a report this month that detailed his ties to agencies linked to the Russian disinformation. The report documented the extensive use of A.I., which one of the company’s researchers, Clément Briens, estimated made Mr. Dougan’s work far cheaper than hiring a troll army.

At the time, Recorded Future identified 57 domains that Mr. Dougan had created. In a two-day span after the report was published, 103 new sites appeared, all on a server in California.

“He’s trying to obfuscate the Russian links,” Mr. Briens said.

Mr. Dougan at times treats his activities as a game of cat and mouse. He spent months engaging with a researcher at NewsGuard, McKenzie Sadeghi, revealing details of his life in Moscow while mocking her boss, Mr. Brill.

“He seemed to be toying with me, both to elicit my responses and, it seemed, to show off his talent for global online mischief, without actually admitting anything,” she wrote in the report published on Wednesday.

While Mr. Dougan’s sites have focused on Russian narratives about the war in Ukraine, the researchers and government officials say he has laid the foundation for interference in the unusually large confluence of elections taking place around the world this year.

This suggests a “risk of an expanded operation scope in the near future, potentially targeting diverse audiences and democratic systems in Europe and other Western nations for various strategic objectives,” the diplomatic service of the European Union wrote in a report last month when the network included only 23 websites.

In recent weeks, the sites have included themes that seem intended to stoke the partisan fires in the United States before November’s presidential election.

Last month, articles appeared on two of Mr. Dougan’s newer fake sites, The Houston Post and The Flagstaff Post, detailing a baseless claim that the F.B.I. had planted an eavesdropping device in Mr. Trump’s office at Mar-a-Lago in Florida.

Some of the new sites have names, like Right Review and Red State Report, that suggest a conservative political bent. In April, a site that researchers also linked to Mr. Dougan offered “major cryptocurrency rewards” for leaks of information about American officials, singling out two prosecutors and a judge involved in the criminal cases against Mr. Trump.

“If the site was mine,” he wrote in response to a question about it, “I would want people to give documents on any dirty politician, Republican, Democrat or other.”

Read by Steven Lee Myers

Audio produced by Patricia Sulbarán .

Steven Lee Myers covers misinformation and disinformation from San Francisco. Since joining The Times in 1989, he has reported from around the world, including Moscow, Baghdad, Beijing and Seoul. More about Steven Lee Myers

Ukraine-Russia war latest: Vladimir Putin repeats warning he could send weapons to adversaries of the West

Speaking at the St Petersburg International Economic Forum, Vladimir Putin also says he does not see the conditions for the use of nuclear weapons as set out in Russia's nuclear doctrine - but adds he could not rule out a change to it.

Friday 7 June 2024 17:15, UK

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• Russia economically strong despite 'illegitimate sanctions'
• Ukraine has right to strike targets in Russia - NATO chief
• Russian vessels to make port in Cuba in 'hopes of invoking memory of missile crisis'
• Biden to discuss $225m package with Zelenskyy in France
• Ivor Bennett:  Why is Lavrov in Africa?
• Big picture:  Everything you need to know about the war right now
• Your questions answered: Are there any signs of an underground resistance in Russia?
• Live reporting by Andy Hayes and  Ollie Cooper

Thank you for reading.

We will be back soon with more updates from the war in Ukraine.

Vladimir Putin has said he does not see the conditions for the use of nuclear weapons as set out in Russia's nuclear doctrine - but added he could not rule out a change to the doctrine.

"We have a nuclear doctrine which states that the use of nuclear arms is possible in an exceptional case, when the sovereignty and territorial integrity of our country is threatened," he told the St Petersburg International Economic Forum.

"But the doctrine can be changed.

"The same applies to nuclear tests. We will carry out tests if needed, but so far there is no such need."

Russia could send weapons to adversaries of the West, Vladimir Putin has warned for a second time.

The Russian president repeated the warning from earlier this week during the St Petersburg Economic Forum.

He did not say what countries or entities he was referring to, and he stressed that Moscow is not doing it currently.

"If they supply (weapons) to the combat zone and call for using these weapons against our territory, why don't we have the right to do the same?" he told the crowds. 

"But I'm not ready to say that we will be doing it tomorrow, either."

On Wednesday, Putin told international journalists that Russia could provide long-range weapons to others to strike Western targets in response to NATO allies allowing Ukraine to use their arms to attack Russian territory.

He also reaffirmed Moscow's readiness to use nuclear weapons if it sees a threat to its sovereignty.

Joe Biden has apologised to Volodymyr Zelenskyy for the recent delay in approving new US aid for Ukraine.

Last month, following months of political disagreements, the Senate passed $95bn (£76.2bn) in war aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan .

"I apologise for those weeks of not knowing," the US president said.

"Some of our very conservative members [of Congress] were holding it up. 

"But we got it done, finally. We're still in - completely, totally." 

The Ukrainian president thanked his counterpart for American assistance.  

"It's very important that you stay with us," he said. 

"It's very important that in this unity, the United States of America, all American people stay with Ukraine, like it was during World War Two - how the United States helped to save human lives, to save Europe." 

The two men were speaking in Paris, the day after D-Day commemorations in Normandy.

Russia needs to boost its use of non-Western currencies, Vladimir Putin said as he addressed the St Petersburg International Economic Forum.

He also said his country needs to reduce imports while calling for a major expansion of its domestic financial markets.

Trade with Asia is soaring, he told delegates, adding that almost two fifths of Russian external trade is now in roubles.

The share conducted in US dollars, euros and other Western currencies has declined.

Russia will try to boost the share of settlements conducted in the currencies of BRICS countries - which include Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, Mr Putin said.

"Last year, the share of payments for Russian exports in the so–called 'toxic' currencies of unfriendly states halved, while the share of the rouble in export and import transactions is growing - it is approaching 40% today," the president said.

Russia has referred to nations that imposed sanctions on it as "unfriendly".

 The session begins with an address by the Russian president. 

Vladimir Putin says there is a race among world powers to establish sovereignty. 

He speaks of the need for countries to both establish partnerships and also to look internally to tackle challenges presented by the current global economic landscape. 

Despite all the "obstacles and illegitimate sanctions", Russia remains one of the world's economic leaders, he says. 

He adds that "friendly countries" - those that have not joined sanctions against Moscow - account for three quarters of Russia's mutual trade turnover, and praises them for that. 

Countries including India and China have strengthened economic ties since Mr Putin launched his war in Ukraine. 

Vladimir Putin has taken to the stage in St Petersburg to address the International Economic Forum there.

He's joined by Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwais and Bolivian President Luis Alberto Arce Catacora. 

Chairing the session is Sergey Karaganov - a Russian political scientist. 

We'll bring you any key lines here in this live blog. 

A T-shirt is on sale at the St Petersburg International Economic Forum printed with a phrase attributed to Vladimir Putin, Sky News has discovered. 

"If a fight is inevitable, throw the first punch," it says.

The Russian president reportedly said it in 2015.

He apparently explained that it was something he had learned while growing up on the streets of Leningrad - a former name of St Petersburg. 

The Russian defence ministry has accused Ukraine of injuring 20 people, including children, in a missile attack on the Russian-controlled eastern Ukrainian city of Luhansk, using US-supplied ATACMS missiles.

Four of five missiles were shot down by air defence systems, the ministry said in a statement.

However, one of the missiles damaged two residential apartment blocks, it added, claiming it was deliberate.

Sky News is unable to verify the allegations.

There has been no immediate comment from Ukraine. 

The European Commission supports starting EU accession talks with Ukraine, the country's prime minister has said.

Denys Shmyhal said the commission had confirmed in a report that Kyiv had fulfilled the remaining steps required to start negotiations. 

"Now we expect our European partners to take the next step - to start negotiations on European Union membership this month," Mr Shmyhal said on Telegram. 

Earlier (7.43am post) we reported that the commission was reportedly ready to recommend that accession talks get underway.

It is part of an attempt to signal support for Kyiv before Hungary takes over the rotating presidency of the EU next month, the Financial Times reported.

The EU announced earlier this year that it was sending an additional £42bn in aid to Ukraine - but only after  weeks of resistance from Hungary , which reportedly has concerns about minority rights in Ukraine. 

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• Google Scholar

Dr Michael Martin Richter

Academic and research departments.

Michael Martin Richter (PhD) joined the University of Surrey within the Horizon Europe REDEMOS project on EU democracy promotion abroad. Previously, he was a Research Fellow at the Research Centre for East European Studies at the University of Bremen as well as a Fellow at Harvard University, the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP), and the Foreign Investors Council in Latvia (FICIL). He received his PhD in the Political Economy field from the University of Bremen for his thesis titled ‘Power, Politics, and Anti-Corruption Reforms in Ukraine: The Role of Western Actors’. Additionally, he obtained master’s degrees from the College of Europe, the Higher School of Economics, the University College London, as well as bachelor’s degrees from the ESB Business School and the Jagiellonian University. His research focuses on democracy promotion in the post-Soviet space and his works have been published, among others, in Global Policy, the Journal of Common Market Studies, Politics and Governance, Vox Ukraine, and New Eastern Europe. He is additionaly active in the NGO sector as Academic Adviser to the Coopernicus platform and as Member of the Advisory Board of the Our Future Foundation.

Areas of specialism

Publications.

Michael Martin Richter (2023): Victim of its Own Success (?) – The European Union’s Anti-Corruption Policy Advice in Ukraine Between Grand Visions and (Geo)political Realities.   Journal of Common Market Studies .

Michael Martin Richter (2023): ‘ Call the Bluff’ or ‘Build Back Better’ – Anti-Corruption Reforms in Post-War Ukraine. Global Policy, Volume 14, Issue 4, pp. 611-622.

Michael Martin Richter (2023): Diversity of Actors in Reform Backsliding and its Containment in the Ukrainian Hybrid Regime. Politics and Governance, Volume 11 , Issue 1, pp. 5-15.

Additional publications

Jakub Bartoszewski, Michael Martin Richter (2022): Eastern Europe’s Melting Pot: How Warsaw Became the Conduit for Spreading Western Values in the Post-Soviet World. Journal of International Affairs, Volume 74,  Issue 1, pp. 297-318 .

Michael Richter (2020): A Greater European FTA: Economic Gains yet Socio-Political Pains for Moscow? Greater European Journal Vol. 2,  pp. 48-57 .

Book Chapters

Michael Martin Richter et al. (2023): Political Cooperation Formats. In: Breanna Kerr (ed.), Voices from Central and Eastern Europe – Emerging Leaders Speak on the Second Annual Transatlantic Security Initiative . International Republican Institute .

Michael Martin Richter (2022): Innovationen als Wachstumsfaktor in der Transformation. Eine komparative Analyse von Ostdeutschland und Polen [Innovation as a growth factor during the transformation. A comparative analysis of east Germany and Poland]. In: Flade, Falk; Steinkamp, Anna; Walerski, Konrad (eds.), Transformation in Polen und Ostdeutschland. Voraussetzungen, Verlauf und Ergebnisse (pp. 103-122). Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.

Michael Richter (2019): Integracja w Europie – czy bliższa współpraca to klucz do wspólnego dobrobytu? [Integration in Europe - is Closer Cooperation the Key to Shared Prosperity?]. In: European Financial Congress (ed.), Akademia: Co zmienilibyśmy w Polsce i Europie? (pp. 46-51).

Michael Richter (2019): Zukunft der europäischen Sicherheitsinfrastruktur, [The Future of the European Security Infrastructure]. In: Crawford, Claudia; Chernov, Igor (eds.), Das europäische Sicherheitssystem: Mittel und Wege der Krisenbewältigung ( pp. 24-26) . Konrad Adenauer Foundation.

Science Communication

Michael Martin Richter (2023, October 2):    The realists vs idealists Brussels battle on Ukraine's EU accession. EU Observer.

Michael Martin Richter (2023, July 31): Webinar titled ‘500 Days of the War Against Ukraine’. Coopernicus.

Michael Martin Richter (2023, July 30): Live interview titled ‘Rebuilding the Pillars of Ukrainian Democracy’. TVP World.

Michael Martin Richter (2023, June 8): Reading the Fine Print: Anti-Reforms Under the Banner of Reforms. Vox Ukraine .

Michael Martin Richter (2023, February 27): Ukraine’s Europeanization – an interview with Michael Richter. Coopernicus.

Michael Martin Richter (2022): Verzweiflungstat aus wirtschaftlicher Schwäche - Russlands Krieg als Versuch, das Imperium wiederherzustellen [Act of Dispair out of Economic Weakness – Russia’s War as an Attempt to Restore the Empire]. In: WeltTrends, No.186 , pp. 10-14.

Michael Martin Richter (2022, March 1):  Interview for Ashraq News on the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Ashraq News .

Michael Martin Richter (2021): Konsum, Konservatismus und Staats-Kapitalismus – die PiS beschließt die sozio-ökonomische “Polnische Ordnung” [Consumption, Conservatism and State Capitalism – the PiS Party Brings the New Socio-Cconomic “Polish Order”].  In: Polen-Analysen 284 , pp. 2–6.

Michael Martin Richter (2021): Die Ukraine auf dem Weg zum Rechts- oder Präsidentenstaat [Ukraine on the way towards a presidential or rule of law state]. In: Ukraineanalysen no. 256 , October 2021.

Michael Martin Richter (2021, July 5): KMU in Russland: Wie Unternehmergeist wecken und fördern? [SMEs in Russia: how to awake and develop entrepreneurial spirit?].  Zaren, Daten, Fakten Podcast. German Chamber of Commerce (AHK) in Russia.

Michael Martin Richter (2021): Radiophobia - Why the Fallout of Unscientific Myths from Chernobyl Still Prevails. In: New Eastern Europe No 5 /2021, pp. 141-146.

Michael Martin Richter (2021): Russische kleine und mittlere Unternehmen (KMUs) in der Corona-Krise – Ein Sterben auf Raten [Russian SMEs Dring COVID – a Death in Tranches]. In: Russland-Analysen no. 404.

Michael Richter (2021): Das Moskauer Damoklesschwert - Zum Verhältnis zwischen der EU und Russland, [Moscow’s Sword of Damocles – on the Relations Between EU and Russia]. In: WeltTrends, No.176 , pp. 58-61.

Michael Richter (2021, February 8): The battle of Nord Stream 2 narratives, Ridl.io.

Michael Richter, Mikhail Polianskii (2020): Belarus: Strategisch gefangen, [Belarus: Strategically Iocked]. In: WeltTrends, No.170 , pp. 9-14.

Michael Richter, Jakub Bartoszewski (2020): Dirigisme 2.0 – The Way to Go for the Region? In: New Eastern Europe, No. 5 /2020, pp. 98-106.

Janis Kluge, Michael Richter (2020, March 20): The Lisbon-Vladivostok Illusion. Op-ed, Ridl.io .