A former Hertfordshire Constabulary officer has been stripped of his British citizenship over links to the Kremlin in a first-of-its-kind decision.
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood issued the deprivation order to Mark Bullen, 45, in October 2025, just one month into her tenure, stating that revoking his nationality was “conducive to the public good”.
The evidence underpinning the decision remains classified, with the Home Office citing national security concerns.
Such measures are typically reserved for individuals accused of terrorism, or involvement in serious organised crime.
The former police officer of 11 years has lived in Russia since leaving the force in 2014 but would still make regular trips back to the UK to visit family.
Two other people have lost their citizenship over suspected links with Russia, but neither were born in the UK.
Bullen, who grew up in Enfield, North London, during that time, he encouraged Russian policemen to make professional visits to the UK and regularly take trips to the country himself. In 2010 he participated in a month-long exchange in St Petersburg.
In 2022 he gained Russian citizenship, which he gushed had been a “lifelong dream”.
He spoke of his obsessed with Russia the country he first visited aged 18 in 1999 and even taught himself the language.
In 2014 Bullen moved to the Russia where he now works for a football team in St Petersburg. He is married to a Russian woman and has four children.
On a trip back to the UK from Russia in November 2024, Bullen was pulled aside and questioned for hours by counterterrorism officers at Luton Airport under Schedule 3 of the Counterterrorism and Border Security Act 2019, which relates to suspected hostile state activity.
Shamima Begum, who left UK aged 15 to marry a jihadist was stripped of her British citizenship on February 19, 2019, by then-Home Secretary Sajid Javid on national security grounds. The decision followed her discovery in a Syrian refugee camp after her alleged jihadist husband – an Islamic state fighter was killed in 2015.