‘Britain is under attack’: Putin waging daily covert war on UK as Moscow threatens British targets
Britain is already being ‘attacked by Russia every day’ as Putin ramps up grey-zone war, former Army intelligence officer warns
Britain is already being attacked by Russia “on a daily basis” through sabotage, cyber attacks and other covert operations designed to stay below the threshold of open war, a former British Army intelligence officer has warned.
Listen to this article
Speaking to LBC's Henry Riley, Colonel Philip Ingram said the latest threat against British defence firms should not be dismissed as routine Kremlin sabre-rattling, warning that Moscow has increasingly turned to proxies and so-called grey-zone tactics as its confrontation with the West deepens.
It comes after claims that senior figures in Moscow were considering attacks on British soil, with defence manufacturers supporting Ukraine potentially regarded by Russia as legitimate targets.
Speaking to LBC, Col Ingram said: “Putin [has] been attacking us on a daily basis. What they're threatening is nothing new.”
He pointed to a series of incidents across Britain and Europe, including warehouses containing supplies destined for Ukraine being targeted, explosive devices being placed in logistics networks, suspicious drones around military facilities and Russian-linked cyber attacks.
“We've seen cyber attacks from the Russians against targets in the UK, and we have seen the Russians actively targeting our undersea cables,” he said.
“We are being attacked on a daily basis.”
Col Ingram warned the latest threats amounted in part to “war in the information domain”, intended to frighten the British public, but warned the danger behind the rhetoric was real.
“The reality is they are carrying out these sorts of attacks,” he added.
He warned that as Russia comes under greater pressure in Ukraine, Moscow is likely to increase operations against countries providing Kyiv with military support.
Russia, he said, knows that a direct conventional attack on Britain or another NATO member could trigger a devastating response, leaving the Kremlin instead to operate in the “grey zone”.
“It knows it cannot strike back from a conventional military perspective, so it will do what it can in what we describe as the grey zone, this sub-threshold zone — activities that are below what would trigger a NATO Article 5 response,” Col Ingram said.
“And the volume of that is increasing.”
Read more: CIA director visited Russia to urge Moscow to not attack NATO
The former intelligence officer warned Vladimir Putin was also watching political divisions across Europe and debates over defence spending for signs that Western resolve was weakening.
“He sees fractures in our collective response, and he's exploiting those fractures,” he said.
“This is where we need to wake up to the real threat, because at some stage he may say that actually it is worth going into more conventional military tactics.”
Col Ingram said the threat should not lead Britain to pull back from its support for Ukraine.
Instead, he argued, it should strengthen the case for greater assistance to Kyiv.
“If anything, what it should do is embolden us to support Ukraine further,” he said.
He warned that even a peace agreement freezing the current front lines would be unlikely to end Russian operations against the West.
“Putin will continue this sort of action and he'll likely increase it as he rebuilds his military,” he said.
Col Ingram also suggested growing Ukrainian attacks on Russian infrastructure could eventually begin to weaken Putin's domestic standing.
He said Russians who had largely accepted the Kremlin's presentation of the war were increasingly seeing its effects at home through attacks on oil and gas infrastructure, fuel shortages and disruption to logistics.
“The Russian people are beginning to realise that this war is coming home to them,” he said.
“And that's the green shoots of something that will question Putin's real authority.”