Often the greatest security risks are hiding in plain sight. The Russia of Vladimir Putin is so shameless in its operations to undermine Western democracy, it seeks ever more inventive ways of advertising its wares.<\/p>\n
In previous decades, it was about bumping off critics of the regime, performatively with poison. \u201cLook everyone, look what we can do,\u201d was the message. \u201cAnd you could be next, if you\u2019re not careful.\u201d In recent years, the Kremlin has employed a multi-pronged, anything-goes approach. This has taken the form of cyber attacks, disinformation, bribery and other forms of societal manipulation \u2013 and old-fashioned thuggery.<\/p>\n
It seems to take something ridiculously amateurish to capture the public imagination: two twenty-somethings \u2013 a Ukrainian national and a Ukrainian-born Romanian \u2013 convicted this week of arson<\/a> for setting alight a car once owned by the prime minister. Days after that attack in May last year, they set ablaze two homes, including one rented out to Keir Starmer\u2019s sister-in-law.<\/p>\n The prosecution told the Old Bailey the men were recruited online by a Russian-speaking Telegram user called \u201cEl Money\u201d. They were promised large amounts of cryptocurrency in payment but knew nothing about the bigger political picture. The court was told that the defendants did not demonstrate a political or ideological motivation.<\/p>\n According to a BBC Panorama documentary, evidence suggests that \u201cEl Money\u201d is a 23-year-old Russian diplomat by the name of Evgeny Lyukshin, the son of a senior official who has been schooled in information warfare.<\/p>\n This is just the latest in a string of tawdry crimes carried out by often petty criminals on behalf of the Kremlin or the FSB intelligence agency, or both \u2013 most of the time (but not always) they act in unison. The choice of perpetrators is deliberate. The idea is to cause trouble in broad daylight to those who have stood up to Vladimir Putin, while maintaining an ostentatiously spurious distance.<\/p>\n More than four years into the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Starmer has played an important role in galvanising Europe, alongside the German Chancellor and French President, at a time when the United States is at best ambivalent.<\/p>\n Yet, in terms of the Putin threat closer to home<\/a>, the British public still seems in denial. Whereas Friedrich Merz has strong-armed citizens brought up on pacificism into a trillion-euro investment into Germany\u2019s armed forces, ensuring that they hit the new Nato target of 3.5 per cent of defence spending by 2029, Starmer has failed in that endeavour \u2013 leading to the resignation of his respected defence secretary, John Healey. Britain is miles away from being battle-ready against Russia or any other hostile state.<\/p>\n Underlying that reluctance to spend is a reluctance to square with voters. Shortly before Healey quit, Lord Robertson<\/a>, one of his predecessors at the Ministry of Defence and lead author of the Strategic Defence Review, denounced Starmer\u2019s Government for an abrogation of responsibility. Would an administration led by Andy Burnham have a more acute awareness of the dangers? In foreign and security policy, the prime minister-in-waiting is untested.<\/p>\n A host of security experts have pointed out that the nature of warfare nowadays suggests that Britain \u2013 along with other Western states \u2013 is already in direct conflict with Russia. The term previously used was \u201chybrid warfare\u201d, but that\u2019s been largely dispensed with because some believe it plays down a co-ordinated strategy of subversion.<\/p>\n Now it\u2019s called, the \u201cgrey zone\u201d and, whether it\u2019s internet takedowns, cyber-attacks, assassinations, arson, bribery, corruption or disinformation, it is happening in front of our eyes. In a recent speech, the director of the usually secretive communications intelligence agency GCHQ warned of Russian activity \u201cstretching from the seabed to cyberspace\u201d. Anne Keast-Butler accused Moscow of \u201crelentlessly targeting critical infrastructure, democratic processes, supply chains and public trust\u201d in Britain.<\/p>\n