The news that Ukraine is using British-made drones in its deep strike campaign has prompted scornful words from Russia and talk of potential retaliation.
British drones including the Callen-Lenz Nyan have been used in Ukraine’s recent attacks well inside Russia, which have hit targets from oil refineries to retail warehouses.
Moscow is angry about the way the West is funding and arming the strikes, but has spun the story as good news: London is providing drones because it recognises that Ukraine is making no progress on the battlefield. According to one of the so-called voyenkory, pro-war social media commentators, “Kyiv’s British puppet-masters are trying desperately to delay a Ukrainian defeat.”
The ultra-nationalist Tsargrad news site cited one defence expert saying that use of British attack drones against Russia was “an open secret”, with another adding that so long as Britain was not actually sending troops, this was simply business as usual.
British weapons have been used by Ukraine since the start of the war, when NLAW (Next-Generation Light Anti-Tank Weapon) shoulder-fired missiles proved highly effective against the invaders’ tanks. More recently, air-launched Storm Shadow cruise missiles were used to strike targets on Russian soil.
Only a few hundred Storm Shadows were provided, simply because the UK’s total stocks at the time were under a thousand. However, these drones represent a qualitatively different factor, accurate, easy to launch and relatively cheap.
British drones including the Callen-Lenz Nyan have been used in Ukraine’s recent attacks inside Russia. Pictured, British troops move a Nyan One Way Effector (OWE) in Estonia (Photo: BAE Systems)The Storm Shadows supplied to Ukraine cost around £1m each and have a maximum range of around 150 miles; a Nyan has a similar range but costs under £100,000. Furthermore, while Storm Shadows need to be launched from a specially-rigged Su-24 bomber, which can be shot down beforehand, the Nyan is projected from a mobile, ground-based catapult.
Of course, no one weapons system is a game changer. Nonetheless, given the tempo of Ukraine’s drone campaign against medium- and long-range targets inside Russia, Britain’s promise to Kyiv that it will provide it with over 150,000 drones of various types over a year is a powerful practical gesture.
The Kremlin’s defence experts and intelligence agencies have known for months about the use of British-made drones against it, but now it has become public knowledge, it must decide how to respond.
Moscow has ways in which it could respond over and above the existing arm’s length campaigns of cyberattacks and disinformation. Vladimir Putin openly describes his “special military operation” as having become a proxy war with Europe, and many in Russia believe that Western companies supplying Ukraine should be considered legitimate military targets.
The Storm Shadow cruise missile on display at the Paris Air Show in 2023 (Photo: AP Photo/Lewis Joly, File)Last week, explosions ripped through two European facilities involved in supplying Ukraine: an arms depot in Bulgaria on Monday, a factory producing artillery rounds outside Rome on Thursday. In both cases, the authorities are still investigating the causes, but they have highlighted concerns that Russia could escalate its campaign of sabotage against European factories and supply lines.
An alleged 2024 plot to murder Armin Papperger, CEO of Germany’s Rheinmetall arms corporation was disrupted, but there continues to be the threat that Moscow could go after the directors and engineers of companies actively seeking to supply Ukraine.
However, any escalation would be risky and would generate a Western response in return.
Given the inflammatory nature of Russian rhetoric these days, as well as the rock-bottom state of the relationship between London and Moscow, it is perhaps surprising that the Kremlin is not making more of the news about British-made drones. The initial decision seems to have been to downplay it, while hinting at possible retaliation somewhere down the line.
The Kremlin is increasingly wary of public opinion in the run-up to September’s elections. Yabloko – the only party with a clear anti-war platform and even the faintest chance of getting the 5 per cent of the vote needed to make it into parliament – was last week barred from the ballot on very questionable grounds. There is no question that Putin was behind this, even if formally it was a decision by the Supreme Court.
The Kremlin seems at present unwilling to move beyond rhetoric. There is already a growing anti-war sentiment inside the country and his political technologists don’t want to rock the boat before next month’s parliamentary elections. It is not that they won’t be rigging those elections – they will – but that they don’t want to have to do so any more than absolutely necessary.
Despite Ukraine’s deep strike campaign, Putin seems to believe that this winter will allow him to force Kyiv into concessions, as his missiles hammer Ukraine’s already-degraded electricity grid and water supplies. He may feel differently if he has made no real progress by spring, and if more British drones are darkening his skies. For now, though, it would seem that he does not want to introduce yet another unpredictable variable into the equation by, as he sees it, punishing Britain.
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