Since the Russian embassy in London warned in August that the U.K. support for Ukraine – especially its supply of drones used to hit targets far behind the frontlines – would “carry consequences”, there has been speculation as to what those might be.
Recent events give us clues to Russia’s possible response. Just yesterday, Germany, blamed Russia for a drone attack on Leipzig airport in August. In September 2025, Denmark refused to rule out Russian involvement when drones disrupted air traffic at Copenhagen airport in September 2025.
A look at recent history gives us a fuller understanding – and also strongly suggests this is a threat that will endure as long as Vladimir Putin is in the Kremlin.
For if the threat from Russia has become more obvious and active since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, it did not begin then. After a kind of post-Cold War honeymoon, tensions between Russia and the West began to flare up again in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
In the case of the UK, that included anger over the presence in London of people who were wanted in Russia. The most high-profile cases were those of Alexander Litvinenko, a former FSB agent, and Sergei Skripal, who had served in Russian military intelligence. Both were poisoned, Litvinenko, fatally, in 2006. Skripal and his daughter Yulia narrowly survived an attempt on their lives in 2018. They have been in hiding ever since.
These cases give us a clue to the Kremlin’s view now because they help to explain why the U.K. is seen as enemy number one. As a correspondent in Moscow in the noughties, I was often asked why the British government refused to return to Russia people wanted there. The answer, that the government did not control the decisions of the judiciary, was simply not believed – because in Russia, judges largely did what the Kremlin wanted.
So what could happen now? Sabotage, arson, and cyberattacks, are all real dangers. Given the particular cause of Russia’s current warning of “consequences”, the use of drones cannot be ruled out.
Then there is the propaganda value the threat alone creates. The security services ruled out any Russian role in the electrical substation fire that caused massive disruption to Heathrow airport in March 2025. That did not stop speculation that Russia might be to blame. The same will probably be true of any major failure of infrastructure.
Putin’s cheerleaders know this. The former president turned social media warrior, Dmitry Medvedev, even taunted the then prime minister. “I’m looking forward to Russia being blamed for the Heathrow fire. What are you waiting for, Starmer?”
We have already seen arson attacks on a warehouse in East London, that one orchestrated by the Russian mercenary group, Wagner – and on property linked to Sir Keir Starmer.
In both cases, the actual perpetrators were offered cash to carry out what was not only a crime, but actually part of Russia’s war on the West.
In his 1907 novel, The Secret Agent, Joseph Conrad has a character, a foreign diplomat at a London embassy, who orders his hired hand to carry out an attack of “especial alarming significance”. The embassy is not named – but the character is: “Mr Vladimir”.
In none of the incidents mentioned here – except the warning of consequences – has a direct link to the Russian embassy been demonstrated. In the age of another Vladimir, the tactics may or may not be similar, but the technology has certainly changed.
It is almost 20 years since Estonia suffered from a cyberattack after deciding to move a monument to the Soviet Army, seen by many there as an occupier as much as a second world war liberator. The UK risks experiencing a more sophisticated, updated, version of the same.
Then there may be attempts to disrupt our political processes. But we should keep these in perspective. In 2024, I interviewed Ciaran Martin, the former chief executive of Britain’s National Cyber Security Centre. We discussed possible Russian attempts to influence the referendums on Brexit and Scottish independence. “The intent and activity is there. The impact, I would argue, isn’t,” Martin told me. “The quality of it was risible, and the impact of it absolutely must be assessed as zero.”
The attack that Mr Vladimir orders in The Secret Agent goes disastrously wrong in that the target is not destroyed, and an innocent life is lost – from another point of view, he gets the “bomb outrage” he was looking for.
Vladimir Putin’s suspicion and mistrust of the U.K. goes back far further than the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, though has greatly increased since. Russian attempts to intimidate the U.K. are likely to follow the same path – not always successful, but always aiming to unsettle.
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