Internet-monitoring police and intelligence agencies have, according to some journalistic sources, uncovered evidence that Russian trolls and bots have infiltrated the British far right on social media in order to foment rioting and anti-Muslim / anti-immigrant sentiment more generally.

Reports Bloomberg: ”Along with homegrown posts, UK authorities now suspect foreign state-backed actors are using bots and accounts with stolen British identities on X to amplify anti-immigration sentiment, according to people familiar with the matter. ”Conversations between Russian-speaking trolls focused on how they have infiltrated channels on Telegram, a platform used by the British far-right to organize anti-Muslim demonstrations.”

The news will do little to dampen the fervour of conspiracists who advance theories (some more tinfoil-hattish than others) that Stephen Lennon, aka Tommy Robinson, is some kind of Kremlin asset – though whether via Russia’s SVR, GRU or GUSP agencies is never specified.

Those down this particular rabbit hole argue that, regardless of the routing of the cash, the Kremlin allocates plenty of funds to destabilising the West – far more than enough to explain how ’Robinson’, in apparent contradiction of his frequent pleas of poverty, seems able to jet around the world at will, and book into five-star holiday resorts.

This conjectured lavish Kremlin spending on disruptive Western assets is jokingly referred to in some circles as ’Putin on the Ritz’.