Meet Putin’s glamorous propaganda girls who front a new UK-based news agency ‘that aims to destabilise Britain’

Vladimir Putin has launched a secret propaganda war on the UK - spearheaded by a team of glamorous journalists.

Oxana Brazhnik and Johanna Ross head up the newly opened British bureau of Sputnik news agency which experts claim has been tasked with destabilising the country with conspiracy theories.

Since opening in Edinburgh, it has peddled suggestions that MP Jo Cox may have been murdered as part of a plot by EU Remain supporters to sway the referendum.

It also reported the myth that the West never agreed to expand NATO to Russia's borders, a key argument used by Putin to justify his invasion of Ukraine.

Miss Brazhnik, the bureau chief, has close ties to the Russian President, it was repoted by The Times.

She was previously a political advisor to Putin's deputy chief of staff, Vyacheslav Volodin, who was placed on a EU sanctions blacklist for his role in the annexation of Crimea.

Johanna Ross, Sputnik's executive producer, was a reception supervisor at a Dundee hotel before becoming a journalist only two years ago.

She worked on Russia Insider, a Putin-friendly news website, in Moscow for eight months.

The agency's online editor is former House of Lords researcher Ana Lyon who previously worked for state-controlled radio bradocaster Voice Of Russia.

Sputnik is part of the Rossiya Segodnya news service which is headed by Putin's chief attack dog, Dmitry Kiselyov.

He once said the hearts of gays killed in accidents should be "buried or burnt" because they were "unfit for extending anyone's life."

Analysts say Russia has been turning to propaganda to make up for what it lacks in weaponry and manpower.

Paul Saunders, executive director of US think-tank the Centre for the National Interest, added: "The United States, the EU and Russia have begun what appears to be a long-term confrontation.

"As the weaker party, Moscow is seeking whatever levers it can find to undermine its opponents."

A NATO souce told The Times: "The Russian information effort is to muddy the waters, to create uncertainty."

Sputnik said its role was to "provide intelligent alternative points of view on global events."