Andy Burnham’s decision to enable Ukraine to build its own Scalp/Storm Shadow missiles is undoubtedly the right one. As their war for national survival rumbles on, and the tactics and technology used by each side develops, the Ukrainians’ needs have changed.
At the outset, the requirement was for the urgent delivery of any weaponry which would help their armed forces stave off Russia’s invasion, such as the famous Nlaws which wrought so much ruin on Putin’s armoured columns in the Battle of Kyiv. Then the need grew for tanks, and artillery shells by the million, as both armies engaged in a slugging match across the plains and cities of Donetsk.
Now, the Ukrainians are using increasingly high-tech missiles to take the war well beyond the front line, bombarding ships in the Sea of Azov, striking at Russia’s valuable oil refineries and weapons factories, and disrupting the logistics and distribution of major Russian corporations like Wildberries. Some of that is still done using Western-supplied weapons, but much of this long-distance war is prosecuted with home-grown Ukrainian missile technology, developed in the painful years since the Russian invasion.
Now that the period of immediate crisis has past, and Ukraine has shown its capacity to innovate and manufacture its own drones and missiles, the West is shifting to support and empower that domestic Ukrainian defence industry, rather than only shipping material to the East. It makes sense – both for Ukraine, which will be liberated from nervous and overly restrictive donor rules about how weaponry may be used, and for Western governments, who would rather teach a man to fish than feed him directly.
Even the difficult and unpredictable Trump administration has promised to issue a licence for the domestic manufacture of the Patriot air defence missiles necessary to protect Ukrainian cities from Putin’s nightly bombardment. So, Burnham’s decision is in keeping with this direction of travel, and the right thing to do, both to aid Ukraine in this war and to bolster deterrence to prevent the next.
Predictably, Russia is furious, and has responded in the only language the Kremlin seems to know: threats. It’s a familiar script; for many years we have heard Putin and his thug government warn of “escalation”, while blithely disregarding that they and their pursuit of both hybrid and traditional warfare are the prime escalatory force at work in Europe today.
The Prime Minister has been laudably clear in reply, saying: “Despite Russia’s outrageous threats to my country, we will continue our support for Ukraine.”
While we must not be deterred or cowed by those threats, and we must stand by the Ukrainians all the way in their fight for their freedom and ours, we must also acknowledge the very real possibility of a Russian response targeting Britain.
The Kremlin is a braggart and a loudmouth, and its bark is generally worse than its bite – but it still bites nonetheless. Most famously, the 2018 Novichok attack in Salisbury – in which a nerve agent was deployed on British streets, poisoning Sergei Skripal, a naturalised British citizen, and his daughter Yulia, and killing an innocent British civilian – shows that Putin has the ability and the willingness to commit violence and atrocities against us and our people. That was before we were anything like so active in supporting Ukraine.
Now that the pain of his war of aggression is being felt more acutely and closer to home, it is all the more likely that he will lash out. While they have received less coverage than they deserve, he and his forces have already conducted various attacks against this country more recently than Salisbury.
A series of arson attacks – first against warehouses in London in 2023, and then against Sir Keir Starmer’s home in 2025 – were orchestrated by Russia and its proxies, including the infamous Wagner Group, with a range of British and foreign nationals convicted for their involvement. Another spy ring planned assassinations of journalists and critics of Russia here in Britain, but was disrupted before it could strike. Elsewhere in Europe, there have been sabotage attacks on arms factories, assassinations and cyber attacks aplenty.
So, it’s more than possible that Russia will attack us – it has already happened, and we must assume it will happen again. Appeasement is not an option. Instead, we must harden our infrastructure, and our hearts, for the likelihood of further incidents.
Both are easier said than done. At the high-tech end of the threat is cyber warfare; reports over the weekend claim that Iranian hackers recently shut down a British power station for four days, for example. In our digital age, there are a multiplicity of systems, from energy and water to air traffic control and food logistics, which are potential targets for a cyber attack.
Just as troubling is the potential for a low-tech assault. Those arson attacks were carried out by recruiting and paying random people in this country via messaging apps to commit crimes using basic kit available in the shops.
It’s far from impossible that someone similar could, for instance, disrupt the power supply to a major airport or derail a passenger train without much more financial or practical support from the Russians. Last year, 1,300 flights from Heathrow were disrupted when a substation in Hayes was affected by a fire, while an arson attack by the far-left Vulkangruppe caused a blackout for 40,000 households in Germany in January. Long ago, the French resistance pioneered methods of derailing trains in occupied France that were remarkably low-tech, including unbolting or bending rails.
This is why we just brace ourselves, as well as build up our defences. As the IRA used to say, the targets of terrorism must be lucky every day, while terrorists only need to get lucky once. If Russia’s vengeance is coming, we must weather it and keep on doing what is right regardless.
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