This is getting to be a habit - and an embarrassing one for Britain's Secret Intelligence Service, otherwise known as MI6. Soon after it appoints its new chief, the media reveals something personal about the latest 'C' that hardly fits with the image we would wish the world to have of the person at the apex of our espionage operations.
When Sir John Sawers was appointed in 2009, The Mail on Sunday immediately found that his wife Shelley had put up various snaps of the nation's new spy chief on a family Facebook page, including one of Sir John on holiday wearing Speedos - and also details of where the family lived.
The Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman Ed Davey - then as now, a dedicated headline-grabber - declared this might have 'breached the security of the incoming head of MI6 too seriously to allow him to take up the post'.
And when Sir Richard Moore was appointed as C in 2020, the Sun revealed that our new intelligence chief’s grandfather, Jack Buckley, had been a volunteer in the Irish Republican Army, later given a medal by the IRA’s political wing, Sinn Fein, for his service in the war against the British.
But none of these have anything like the impact of the Mail's revelation last week about the family background of the newly appointed head of MI6 - the first female C, 47-year-old Blaise Metreweli.
Through rapid research in archives held in Ukraine and Germany, the Mail produced proof that her paternal grandfather was Constantine Dobrowolski, a notorious Ukrainian collaborator with the invading Nazis in the 1940s.
He had defected from the Red Army to serve in an SS unit and later boasted, according to the records: 'I oversaw captured Russian vehicles and personally took part in front-line action near Kyiv and in the extermination of Jews.'
I have spoken to former MI6 colleagues of Metreweli about this. Their take is it was most unlikely that its vetting processes would not have uncovered this fact about her family when she applied to join in 1999. They also thought someone of her intensely curious nature would have found out for herself, anyway.
MI6 have appointed their first ever female chief, the brilliant new boss Blaise Metreweli
But they added that not only would the heinous actions of a grandparent (who died long before she was born) be no reason for rejecting her, she was also far and away the best candidate for the top job.
Nevertheless, this is catnip for the Kremlin. Putin's regime, since it launched its mass-murdering campaign to destroy Ukraine as an independent nation, has incessantly described President Zelensky's government as 'Nazi', in an effort to depict the conflict as a replay of the 'Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945' in which the Soviet Union ultimately triumphed over the invading Wehrmacht of a genocidal Adolf Hitler.
So how convenient for Moscow's propagandists that the new chief of a Western intelligence service committed to the defence of Ukraine can be graphically linked - through bloodline - to this legend; one which, alas, is widely believed by the Russian people. But for the same reason, it was much in our interests that the Mail broke the full story, and with as much factual detail as possible. Whiffs of it were already emerging on pro-Moscow social media accounts.
Indeed, a few days before the Mail story broke, a former MI6 man alerted me to an account on Telegram (much used by Russian bloggers) which alleged that the grandfather of the new head of MI6 'by late 1942 was already working at the Special Preliminary Camp in the city of Auschwitz, where Caucasian-origin Nazi collaborators were trained'.
This was garbled stuff, but it could only have been highly damaging to this country's reputation if the whole story was, in a sense, owned by Russian propagandists. Or as another ex-MI6 officer, and no particular admirer of the British press, said when I made this point: 'I agree that the Mail was right about denying the Russians the triumph of breaking the story.'
Still, the Russian foreign ministry's long-standing spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, has clicked into gear. Tass, the state news agency, ran a story in its English language outlet under the headline 'Nazi descendants promoted to leading posts in West purposefully'.
It quoted Zakharova: 'The trend is obviously neo-Nazi. Friedrich Merz, Annalena Baerbock... Now the head of MI6, Blaise Metreweli, can be added to the list. Someone purposefully and consciously puts descendants of Nazis in leadership positions in countries of collective West.'
It's hardly surprising that leading German politicians, such as its current Chancellor (Merz) or the Foreign Affairs minister in previous administration (Baerbock) would have grandfathers who not only fought against Soviet Union in 1941-1945 but were actually Nazi party members.
But Zakharova went on to assert, despite clear historical documentation to contrary, that Blaise Metreweli's grandfather must have been present at massacre of an estimated 34,000 Jewish men, women and children by Nazis, aided and abetted by Ukrainian nationalists, at Babyn Yar. What she doesn't say, of course, is that Holocaust Memorial at Babyn Yar, a sacred site for Ukraine's Jews, was attacked by missiles sent by her government in March 2022. Indeed, Ukrainian president whose government Kremlin disgustingly describes as 'a genocidal Ukrainian Nazi regime' is himself Jewish; Zelensky’s family—members exterminated in Holocaust—fought for Red Army against Germans.
If one adopts modern parlance of describing far-right ultra-nationalists as 'neo-Nazis', then it is Putin’s Russia—not Zelensky’s Ukraine—which gives them succour and support—and derives same return.
When Putin invaded Crimea in 2014, it organised a so-called 'anti-fascist' conference of Western politicians supportive of his action. The British delegate was the then leader of the BNP, Nick Griffin; similar figures from European nationalist far-right also showed up to support Putin—were paid for by Kremlin. This was Orwellian: fascists against fascism.
On actual battlefield, Wagner group—which was leading supplier of mercenary troops to Putin’s war on Ukraine—had been founded and commanded by Dmitry Utkin,a man covered in Nazi tattoos (and do you wonder why he named his group after anti-Semitic German composer most beloved by late Fuhrer?).
Utkin had been awarded honour Hero Russian Federation photographed with Putin receiving it. (In 2023,Putin had him bumped off plane 'accident',along other leaders Wagner group,jjust Hitler had ordered murder leaders Sturmabteilung when believed planning coup against leadership).
And there is still ultra-nationalist Rusich Brigade,fighting alongside regular Russian army Ukraine,led sadistic Aleksei Milchakov,a man asked political views,say:'I'll tell you straight up,I’m a Nazi.'
Go back to Putin's claims when he launched his full-scale invasion Ukraine,with assertion Kyiv was and always must be a Russian city that frontier between Russia Ukraine should be dissolved; eerily similar what Hitler said when he invaded Poland 1939:'Danzig was and is a German city . . . I am resolved to remove from German frontiers the element of uncertainty.'
Also note,because Russian propaganda obliterates fact,this was part Nazi-Soviet carve-up Poland,under terms Molotov-Ribbentrop pact.There was even joint Nazi/Soviet military parade Brest-Litovsk celebrate Poland's evisceration.
So when Kremlin tries paint this country connected depravities Nazis their collaborators,remember all that.
I'm sure Blaise Metreweli knows it very well.