Britain has left itself vulnerable to the Kremlin’s dark arts of sabotage and economic coercion

By Edward Lucas

The Times – 23 September 2024

The deaths and injuries caused by turning gadgets into grenades in Lebanon may seem distant. But last week’s havoc should be a reminder of how vulnerable we in this country are to attacks that fall below the threshold of outright war. Even without plastic explosives, modern communications turn seemingly harmless devices into weapons. They can be switched off (or on) remotely in large numbers, causing chaos or overloading the electricity grid. They can be forced to overheat, causing fires. Lithium-ion batteries are potential incendiary devices if mistreated (don’t try this at home; I did).

Attackers can exploit the fragility of our high-tech lives. In recent weeks mysterious drones closed an airport in Sweden (an incident that echoes a scare at Gatwick in 2018). Russian jamming of satellite navigation signals has disrupted aviation in the Nordic region. Such stunts cost us money, rattle nerves and pose dilemmas. A mysterious, semi-derelict Russian freighter, the Ruby, carrying 20,000 tonnes of highly explosive fertiliser, is right now trying to enter the Baltic Sea. Stopping it would breach international law. Allowing in this giant floating bomb could herald a catastrophe.

These are not isolated incidents. Russia has for years been targeting western countries with what in the Soviet era were called “active measures”; the modern term is “hybrid warfare”. The aim is to sap willpower and sow division, without the risk and cost of full-scale military aggression. Techniques include arson, assassination, beatings, blackmail, bribery, cyberattacks, economic coercion, illegal migration, “lawfare” (abuse of the legal system), political mischief-making, sabotage, and much more besides. Few western countries know how to defend themselves against these measures. Even fewer have the means to retaliate credibly. That failure frays our deterrence and opens the way for future, more serious attacks. Finland is a rare exception, with decades of experience in handling Russia. It trains decision-makers in resilience, rehearses its response, and deals effectively with mischief, in words and deeds.

… Deterrence rests on the “ouch” factor. The adversary should fear our response, either from experience or because we have communicated credibly what we will do if attacked. Whether we are dealing with Russia, China or Iran, that ouch factor is missing. What would we do if, say, Russian cyberattacks scrambled NHS databases? Or if drones shut down Heathrow? Colossal disruption and economic damage would result. Our last-ditch nuclear arsenal is useless here. So are our overstretched armed forces. Issuing another angry press release and expelling a few of the remaining Russian diplomats in London would produce no ouch in Moscow.

Anyone surprised by this has not been paying attention. Russia has been testing deterrence since the 1990s; so too, increasingly, does China. Our response has been to impose sanctions, boost our military presence in allied countries and issue ever-crosser statements. Sometimes the effect is substantial: co-ordinated expulsions after the nerve-agent attacks in Salisbury in 2018 seriously damaged Russia’s spy networks in Europe. But clearly, nothing we have done has deterred further attacks, for they continue.

We are stuck in our comfort zone. We help Ukraine, but not with enough money or weapons to ensure victory. We do not want to tackle our own bankers, lawyers and accountants who launder Russian money. An alphabet soup of units, directorates and task forces across ministries, agencies and the Cabinet Office admire the problem elegantly and in secret, but do not deal with it. Parliamentary scrutiny would help. But the Intelligence and Security Committee, the only body with the insight and clout to publicly call out our failings, is hobbled by government curbs on its staff and remit. Its most recent chairman, Sir Julian Lewis, is fulminating about this.

Boosting Ukraine’s capabilities so it can strike targets in Russia would be one way of hitting back. So would professional censure, civil liability or criminal prosecution for British and other enablers lolling in the business-class seats on the Kremlin’s gravy train. Making them spill the beans would help to uncover Kremlin cronies’ wealth abroad. American prosecutors do that kind of thing; ours don’t. We used to be rather good at this. The Political Warfare Executive masterminded subversion efforts against the Nazis, from forged ration cards to a fake German military radio station. It worked alongside the dirty-tricks experts of the Special Operations Executive, mandated by Churchill to “set Europe ablaze”. No shortage of ouch there. But our national survival was at stake then. We have yet to realise that now.