Putin is testing Britain's defences without firing a shot

Around the same time, a Russian frigate fired flares at a Danish helicopter, and Poland put its air force on alert. Baltic intelligence chiefs have since gone public with a blunter warning: Moscow is preparing for more decisive action in Europe.

Britain tends to think about the Russian threat in military terms - submarines in the North Atlantic, missiles pointed towards Europe, tanks massed on NATO's eastern frontier. But Vladimir Putin does not need to start a conventional war to damage Britain and its allies. Increasingly, Russia is operating in the space between peace and war, interfering with the infrastructure modern European societies depend on while avoiding the obvious act of aggression that would demand a NATO military response.

To understand where this could lead, Britain should pay much more attention to Kaliningrad.

Kaliningrad is a heavily militarised Russian territory on the Baltic Sea, separated from mainland Russia and surrounded on land by NATO members Poland and Lithuania. It hosts Russia's Baltic Fleet, missiles, air defences and powerful electronic warfare capabilities.

For decades, Western planners worried about what Russia might fire from Kaliningrad. The more urgent question today is what Russia is learning there, and this month's incidents suggest that testing is accelerating.

The clearest example is GPS. Lithuanian authorities say Russia expanded the number of GPS spoofing antennae operating in Kaliningrad from three in early 2025 to thirty-six by May 2026. Their effects can potentially reach around 450 kilometres, covering large parts of Poland, the Baltic states, Scandinavia and the Baltic Sea. Russia disputes accusations that it deliberately targets European civilian infrastructure.

The European Union has gone much further. It has sanctioned the 841st Separate Electronic Warfare Center of Russia's Baltic Fleet, based in Kaliningrad and the EU says the unit sits at the centre of one of Russia's strongest electronic warfare groupings. The links between Russian activity from Kaliningrad and GPS interference affecting European countries and civilian aircraft cannot be ignored.

Why should somebody in Britain care about disruption hundreds of miles away? Because GPS is not simply what helps you find a restaurant on your phone. Satellite positioning and timing support aircraft, commercial shipping, telecommunications, logistics and numerous other systems that keep a modern economy functioning. European aviation authorities now regard interference as serious enough to have established a continent-wide action plan, including new procedures and training for jamming and spoofing.

Kaliningrad therefore offers Russia something extraordinarily valuable. Every episode of interference, and every intercepted drone or intimidated helicopter crew, provides information. How quickly do European authorities detect it? Which systems keep working? How do airlines and navies respond? Can governments establish where it came from? How much will European countries tolerate before imposing consequences?

That is why this matters beyond Poland and Lithuania. It allows Russia to probe the vulnerabilities and political thresholds of NATO countries without sending a single soldier across a border.

Britain is not safely removed from this kind of confrontation. In April, Defence Secretary John Healey revealed that British forces had tracked Russian submarines operating north of Britain, some belonging to Russia's Main Directorate for Deep Sea Research, vessels designed to survey underwater infrastructure in peacetime and potentially sabotage it in conflict. The Royal Navy and RAF monitored them around the clock. September's drone and frigate incidents show the same logic now playing out in the air and at sea simultaneously.

A country such as Britain depends on these connections that it can rarely see. Our data cables cross the seabed, our energy infrastructure sits offshore, our aircraft and ships depend on electronic navigation, and our communications networks rely on precise timing and digital systems. Russia does not necessarily have to destroy these systems but making them unreliable at the right moment could itself create economic and military problems.

France and other European allies face the same challenge. NATO's ability to reinforce its eastern members depends on ports, railways, airports, communications and navigation systems working when they are needed most.

If Russian tanks cross into Lithuania, everybody understands what has happened. But what if GPS becomes unreliable? What if a cable is damaged, or a drone crosses a border and its origin is disputed? Each incident may appear too small on its own to justify a major response. Taken together, and taken at this month's pace, they steadily weaken the security of European societies, creating one of NATO's hardest problems.

Even people inside Kaliningrad appear to experience infrastructure problems. In our recent survey of 100 residents, 34% reported disruptions weekly or daily. The survey cannot tell us what caused them, but it offers a glimpse into life inside an increasingly militarised, and increasingly restless, region.

For years, Britain watched Kaliningrad because of the weapons Russia had placed there. Following the events of the past fortnight, and the Baltic intelligence chiefs now saying so publicly, we should be watching what Putin is testing there.

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Prof Azeem Ibrahim OBE was an advisor on the UK’s Integrated Defence Review, is a former reservist in the UK’s Parachute Regiment and authored Authoritarian Century: Omens of a Post-Liberal Order (Hurst:2023) and A Greater Britain: Rethinking UK’s Global Strategy (Biteback: 2025)

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