It was predictable that Russia would respond in its usual menacing fashion to the explosive arrival of British-made drones on its territory. These medium-range unmanned aerial vehicles, as they’re known in military circles, have participated in a recent Ukrainian campaign that has caused an estimated total of £35bn in economic damage to the Russian Federation.
Resentment at this intervention is palpable in the statement issued by the Russian embassy in London. It accused Britain, absurdly, of being “an accomplice and co-perpetrator of the bloody crimes and terrorist attacks committed by Ukrainian neo-Nazis”.
It was more accurate in identifying this intensification of British and Ukrainian cooperation – very much a mutually advantageous process – as an “escalation”. What it omitted was who it was that launched the illegal and, it turns out, doomed invasion of Ukraine more than four years ago.
The Russians warn Britain that “the deeper its involvement in the conflict… the higher the price it will pay”: “London’s actions will inevitably carry consequences for which it will have to answer.”
Such “consequences” are as yet unspecified, but these are not idle threats. Britain knows from long and bitter experience what these can involve, because they are all-too familiar.
They can be directly or indirectly organised by the various organs of the Russian state, or by external semi-autonomous gangs working on the assumption that their malicious deeds will please Putin. These can involve assassinations on British soil, and the use of potential weapons of mass destruction, as with the Skripal poisonings. Cyberattacks, including on the NHS and major industrial organisations – notably, Jaguar Land Rover – are also routine. These could easily spread to any number of companies, banks and government agencies.
Then there are the activities of the “shadow fleet”, surveilling and dredging vital undersea cables and offshore wind turbines. There are farmyards of Russian bots fomenting dissent and hatred on social media, disrupting elections, triggering racial violence and planting conspiracy theories of any and every kind to divide a free society. There is also the more conventional sabotage and espionage.
Nothing is too bizarre, as was seen most recently in the trial of two Ukrainian men paid by the Russians for three separate arson attacks on properties and a car linked to the then prime minister Sir Keir Starmer.
Equally outlandish accusations about those incidents were invented online and spread by the useful idiots. Perhaps the recent hoax texts from the White House to Andy Burnham were the work of enemy agents.
We have also experienced violations of UK territorial waters and airspace, and harassment of RAF planes. All such activities have been damaging to the British economy and the cohesion of society.
So the authorities know what to expect – and it can all be dealt with. The next steps are obvious. Every agency, arm of the military, the state and private sector organisation must redouble its efforts at physical and cybersecurity. From their long history in the field, the Russians are good at spying, but – as the stories revealed by the KGB defector Oleg Gordievsky showed – they can also be incompetent, corrupt and ineffective, just as the Russian armed forces have proven themselves to be during the ongoing “special military operation”.
Russia may be a nuclear superpower, but that is not much use to it in the current conflict. President Putin has idly talked about the use of the ultimate weapon against the West, but has, of course, never followed through. Chilling words have come each time when the West has aided Ukraine.
The first consignments of Abrams fighting vehicles; of Tiger and Challenger tanks; of Mig and F-16 fighters; of successive financial packages for Kyiv and rounds of sanctions on Russia… each has been met with dire warnings and the kind of “hybrid warfare” that many European nations have had to contend with, especially frontline states such as Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Romania.
As of yet, there have been no nuclear warheads aimed at Paris or London, and no serious incursions into Nato territory. For all the talk of new secret bases from which high-powered drones could be launched, a Russian landing in Kent still seems unlikely.
Yet one day, whatever the outcome of the Ukraine war – and especially if Ukraine falls – some sort of further Russian imperialist assault on Eastern Europe is perfectly plausible. It is why, given American disengagement, Europe does need to build its own defence identity, and find the funds to do so.
In the meantime, the new chancellor, John Healey, will understand better than most that, in this era of asymmetric warfare, a substantial investment in the Secret Intelligence Service will be repaid many times over.