{"id":77042,"date":"2026-07-05T16:18:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-05T16:18:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/77042\/"},"modified":"2026-07-05T16:18:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-05T16:18:10","slug":"russia-has-been-waging-hybrid-warfare-against-britain-for-its-support-of-ukraine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/77042\/","title":{"rendered":"Russia has been waging hybrid warfare against Britain for its support of Ukraine"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on June 22; Britain’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer in London on June 22.Alexander Zemlianichenko\/Pool via REUTERS; Thomas Krych\/AP Photo\/The Associated Press<\/p>\n

Arson at the Prime Minister\u2019s house. Warning shots fired in the English Channel. Cyberattacks that have badly damaged Britain\u2019s health care system and economy.<\/p>\n

Britain and Russia are not at war. But a series of dangerous incidents over the past two years has pushed the two nuclear powers closer to open conflict than at any time since the height of the Cold War.<\/p>\n

While Moscow has been accused of waging what\u2019s known as \u201chybrid warfare\u201d against the entire NATO alliance since 2014, the Kremlin seems to take its tactics a step further when the target is Britain, which it blames for helping prolong the war in Ukraine.<\/p>\n

With Russian troops bogged down<\/a>, and Ukrainian forces striking deep into Russia with drones and missiles, the question facing Britain\u2019s defence establishment is how far Moscow may go with its hybrid warfare campaign \u2212 and whether it\u2019s a prelude to a more direct confrontation.<\/p>\n

Rescuers search for survivors as Kyiv mourns at least 30 killed in Russian attack<\/a><\/p>\n

Russian President Vladimir Putin<\/a> has been courting U.S. President Donald Trump \u2013 hoping he\u2019ll help end the Ukraine war in Moscow\u2019s favour \u2013 leaving Britain to take over from the U.S. as the main enemy in the eyes of the Kremlin\u2019s spies and propagandists.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have terrible relations \u2212 and they\u2019re going southwards,\u201d said John Foreman, who served as Britain\u2019s defence attach\u00e9 in Moscow until 2022, when Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine. \u201cFrom the Kremlin\u2019s perspective, we are their public enemy number one.\u201d<\/p>\n

Much of the animosity stems from the war. The Kremlin claims that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was close to accepting a peace deal on Moscow\u2019s terms in the early weeks of the invasion but was dissuaded from signing it after a surprise visit to Kyiv by then-British Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Mr. Zelensky has denied the story, but it remains a central narrative in Kremlin propaganda.<\/p>\n

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Police forensics officers near the home of U.K. Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer in London, England after a fire broke out on May 12, 2025.Leon Neal\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Britain has since been one of Ukraine\u2019s biggest backers, trailing only Germany in the dollar value of the military aid it provided last year, while also rallying European support for Kyiv as Mr. Trump seemingly started to lose interest in the war. London\u2019s role prompted Russia\u2019s SVR foreign intelligence service to release a 2025 statement in which it accused \u201cperfidious Albion\u201d \u2013 a derogatory term for Britain first coined by Napoleon Bonaparte \u2013 of being \u201cthe primary instigator of global conflict.\u201d<\/p>\n

What may have been the first shots of the hybrid war were fired on June 16, when the Russian frigate Admiral Grigorovich fired in the direction of a yacht in international waters just south of the Isle of Wight. The retired British couple on board their yacht were frightened but uninjured.<\/p>\n

U.K. military investigates after Russian warship fires warning shots near yacht in Channel<\/a><\/p>\n

That incident occurred 48 hours after Royal Marines boarded and seized an oil tanker in the English Channel that was flying the flag of Cameroon but was believed to be part of Russia\u2019s \u201cshadow fleet\u201d of sanctions-dodging ships. <\/p>\n

The most symbolic strike occurred last year, when fires were set at two properties and in a car belonging to Prime Minister Keir Starmer, a string of arsons that Mr. Starmer called \u201can attack on democracy.\u201d While two Ukrainian-born men were convicted in the case, London\u2019s Old Bailey court heard they had been recruited and paid via the Telegram messaging app. The Financial Times and the BBC reported this month that the recruiters were based in Russia and aligned with a hacker group affiliated with the Kremlin.<\/p>\n

Kremlin-linked hackers have also been blamed for an August, 2025, cyberattack that halted vehicle production for five weeks at Jaguar Land Rover, one of Britain\u2019s largest employers, a setback that cost the British economy $3.5-billion. A cyberattack in 2024, targeting a provider to the National Health Service, saw the personal data of 33,000 patients stolen and caused months-long waits for blood tests.<\/p>\n

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Britain’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer, left, talks with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky in the garden of 10 Downing Street in London in August, 2025.Ben Stansall\/The Associated Press<\/p>\n

Experts believe the goal of Moscow\u2019s hybrid warfare efforts against Britain and other NATO allies is to destabilize its enemies without having to fight an all-out war. In Britain \u2013 which is about to get its seventh prime minister in the 10 years since it voted to leave the European Union \u2013 the Kremlin\u2019s agents may sense a target that\u2019s ripe for the picking.<\/p>\n

Britain\u2019s Parliament has heard evidence of how Kremlin-controlled media and online bots pushed an anti-EU agenda ahead of the \u201cBrexit\u201d vote in 2016, though the meddling wasn\u2019t seen as decisive to the result.<\/p>\n

Nigel Farage, who co-led the Brexit campaign, was a frequent guest on the Kremlin-run RT television network and has long been accused of having a pro-Russia bias. Mr. Farage\u2019s Reform UK party currently leads in most national opinion polls, despite the November conviction of Nathan Gill, his chief deputy in Wales, on charges of accepting money from a Russian agent. Mr. Gill was sentenced to 10 years in prison.<\/p>\n

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Then-UKIP leader Nigel Farage, left, and then-UKIP leader in Wales, Nathan Gill, before a plenary session at the EU headquarters in Brussels in June, 2016.JOHN THYS\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Some believe the Kremlin hopes Mr. Farage will win the next election and take office with a different view of Mr. Putin and the war in Ukraine, just as Mr. Trump did in the U.S. <\/p>\n

\u201cRussia is obviously harmed by the political decisions made in the U.K., by sanctions, diplomatic isolation, etc. \u2013 and they obviously want that not to be the case any more,\u201d said Helena Ivanov, an associate researcher at the Henry Jackson Society, a London-based security studies institute.<\/p>\n

Ms. Ivanov sees Russia running a misinformation campaign in Britain and other Western countries to convince voters that policies such as sanctions against Moscow and providing military support to Ukraine are not in their best interests. \u201cIf you persuade the voters that that\u2019s true, and then they vote that way, you ultimately get the political outcome that you wanted and you didn\u2019t have to engage in a full-blown war,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

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Keir Starmer stands beneath a display of UAV drones as he delivers a speech in Berkshire on June 30.STEFAN ROUSSEAU\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, Mr. Starmer highlighted the threat posed by Russia as he announced a $28-billion increase in Britain\u2019s defence spending, including purchases of fighter jets, nuclear submarines and a $9.5-billion investment in drones and autonomous weapon systems. Earlier, he said NATO intelligence suggested that Russia could be preparing to attack the alliance \u201cas soon as 2030.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr. Foreman dismissed such talk as hyperbole, noting that hybrid warfare is generally seen as a substitute for, rather than a step toward, open confrontation. <\/p>\n

The bad news for Britain, he said, is that the hybrid attacks are likely to continue \u2212 and perhaps escalate \u2212 as the pressure mounts on Russia and its President. \u201cPutin is a man who has this image of a master spy \u2013 so he likes to use espionage and subversive measures to target Britain and try to undermine it.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a ceremony to lay flowers at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier by the Kremlin wall on May 9.ALEXANDER NEMENOV\/Reuters<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on June 22; Britain’s Prime Minister Keir…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":77043,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2],"tags":[5564,5555,5420,345,5547,13,5565,1193,5546,5560,5561,5557,5548,5545,254,28,528,5559,5553,5576,5549,5550,181,5556,424,2441,5566,5551,5571,5572,5574,5569,5573,5567,5570,2843,5562,5563,14,654,5568,5554,1426,104,5558,5552,46,5575],"class_list":["post-77042","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-britain","tag-alberta","tag-arts-news","tag-bc","tag-breaking-news","tag-breaking-news-video","tag-britain","tag-british-columbia","tag-canada","tag-canada-news","tag-canada-sports","tag-canada-sports-news","tag-canada-trafficcanada-weather","tag-canadian-breaking-news","tag-canadian-news","tag-economy","tag-education","tag-environment","tag-federal-government","tag-foreign-news","tag-globe-and-mail","tag-globe-and-mail-breaking-news","tag-globe-and-mail-canada-news","tag-government","tag-life-news","tag-lifestyle","tag-local-news","tag-manitoba","tag-national-news","tag-new-brunswick","tag-newfoundland-and-labrador","tag-northwest-territories","tag-nova-scotia","tag-nunavut","tag-ontario","tag-pei","tag-photos","tag-political-news","tag-political-opinion","tag-politics","tag-politics-news","tag-quebec","tag-sports-news","tag-technology","tag-travel","tag-trudeau","tag-us-news","tag-world-news","tag-yukon"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77042","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77042"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77042\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/77043"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77042"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77042"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77042"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}