British Prime Minister says Russia interfered in 2016 “Brexit” referendum

British Prime Minister Andy Burnham said that Russia interfered in the referendum on the countryʼs exit from the European Union in 2016.

He spoke about this on the podcast The Rest Is Politics, the BBC reports.

According to the prime minister, after taking office in July 2026, he asked whether Russia had interfered in the referendum and “received a clear answer: yes, it had”.

“I think we have distanced ourselves too much from this issue and not informed people enough about the extent to which other people are seeking to disrupt the political process from abroad,” Burnham added.

He did not specify how exactly Russia interfered in the referendum and how large-scale this activity was.

Commenting on the Prime Ministerʼs words, British Foreign Secretary Stephen Doughty said on the BBC that he would not "go into detail" about Russian interference in the 2016 election.

"Russia has certainly tried to interfere in a number of our democratic processes. They are waging an information war and will spend £1.5 billion on disinformation and propaganda this year alone," Doughty said.

At the same time, he denied that Burnham raised the issue because he wanted to bring Britain back into the EU. He said it was about the broader issue of Russiaʼs attempts to destabilize British democracy.

Brexit supporters from the group Britain Unbound called the prime ministerʼs statement an attempt to question the legitimacy of the British peopleʼs decision in 2016. They acknowledged that foreign interference in the election was unacceptable, but said there was no sufficient reason to believe that Russia influenced the outcome of the referendum.

Burnham also said he discussed Russian disinformation with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz during a visit to the country this week.

"It is important now to clearly bring these things to public attention, and I believe this will help voters in Germany and France understand that some of this policy is being provoked by our enemies, namely Russia," the prime minister added.

BBC notes that this is the first time a British Prime Minister has directly stated that Russia tried to influence the results of the 2016 referendum, although warnings about the Kremlinʼs attempts to influence British politics have been heard for a long time.

In 2020, the UK parliamentary intelligence and security committee published a report on Russian interference in elections and referendums. It did not reach a definitive conclusion on whether Moscow had attempted to influence the Brexit referendum result, but criticized governments for failing to adequately assess and counter the threat.

In response, Russiaʼs foreign minister immediately rejected the report, calling it "Russophobia". A Kremlin spokesman said that Russia did not interfere in the elections of other countries.

But that same year, the British government said that it was almost certain that Russian structures had tried to interfere in the 2019 parliamentary elections.

• In a referendum in 2016, a majority of British citizens (59%) supported leaving the EU. The country officially left the bloc on January 31, 2020.
• On 20 July 2026, Burnham became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, and later stated that the United Kingdom could consider returning to the European Union.

For more news and in-depth stories from Ukraine, please follow us on X.