There are 24 UK towns and cities in Vladimir Putin’s crosshairs, as Russia opens a new and more intense chapter in its “grey zone” attacks against Nato countries.
In the space of a few days, Russian forces fired near a Danish military helicopter, attacked a Ukrainian railway network where Western national security officials – and former prime minister Boris Johnson – were travelling, and fired a drone near a Nato jet in Lithuania.
“What would have been considered beyond the pale a few years ago – such as sending a ‘stray’ military drone or missile into Nato territory – is becoming normalised. Russia wants to inflict an increasing price and ask if we are willing to pay it,” one Western security source said.
Asked earlier this month whether Moscow would strike British military facilities in retaliation for Ukraine’s use of UK-manufactured munitions to strike Russia, Putin issued a barely-veiled threat. He said: “That’s a secret. A military secret.”
What is less of a secret is that Russia is already implicated in a broad range of what intelligence officials like to call “below threshold” activities targeting British towns, companies and assets.
The “threshold” in question is the sort of outright attack on a target that would trigger Nato’s Article 5, the clause which treats an attack on one member as an attack on one on all members, and thereby likely to trigger a military response.
From Starmer to Swindon – Russia’s ‘hybrid targets’
Britain, alongside the Baltic states and allies such as Germany and Poland, is among the countries most frequently targeted by Russian activity designed to hobble its ability to thwart Moscow’s ambitions.
Intelligence officials have long understood that facilities including defence manufacturing sites and military bases present attractive targets for Russian surveillance and sabotage operations.
As one of Europe’s leading defence manufacturers – the UK generates weaponry and military equipment sales worth about £30bn a year – Britain has hundreds of sensitive production sites.
The highest concentrations are centred on 24 towns and cities, ranging from the BAE Systems submarine factory in the Cumbrian town of Barrow-in-Furness, which is responsible for manufacturing the vessels carrying the UK nuclear deterrent, to Swindon, which has emerged in the last 18 months as a key hub for developing and building military-grade drones.
Other important locations range from Portsmouth, the administrative headquarters of the Royal Navy, to Belfast, a key manufacturing hub for the UK’s primary anti-tank missile; and from Glascoed in Wales, a key BAE Systems munitions factory, to Stevenage, which hosts the UK headquarters of advanced missile maker MBDA. A full list can be seen below.
As the Western security source put it: “Russia has surveilled or is in the process of surveilling Britain and Europe for weaknesses and soft spots. It worked out a long time ago that it is not that difficult to pay someone to set fire to a house, warehouse or a factory.”
‘No evidence’
In October 2024, a fire broke out in the main assembly hall of the BAE Systems site in Barrow-in-Furness, resulting in a bill of as much as £217m following smoke damage to a state-of-the-art attack submarine, which was nearing completion at the time.
After an investigation that involved questioning several individuals under formal caution, police concluded that “no evidence of deliberate or reckless cause” could be established.
Such evidence, however, has been available elsewhere in Europe. Last month, the German government conclusively pointed the finger at Moscow for an attempt to fly an explosive drone into a Ukrainian cargo plane at Leipzig airport. Russia denied involvement.
This week, Polish prime minister Donald Tusk cited intelligence which he said shows Moscow is planning to launch “hybrid” drone and missile attacks on European countries that it would try to explain away as “accidental”. On Friday, French President Emmanuel Macron said his country had been targeted by a Russian hybrid attack in recent weeks, which would not be left “without a response”.
After the Danish helicopter near-miss this week, Moscow announced it was handing a medal to the commander of the vessel that Denmark said had come uncomfortably close to damaging or downing its aircraft. The Kremlin insisted its vessel had acted safely to warn off the Danish aircraft.
“Putin’s strategy is incremental. He is slowly ratcheting up the pressure on countries like the UK so he can test the resolve of governments and electorates” to support Ukraine, the Western security source said.
Matt Ince, an organised crime expert and associate fellow at the think-tank Rusi, said that of the several hundred disruptive incidents in Europe attributed to Russia since 2014, some 90 per cent had occurred since the invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Ince said Britain was not facing an immediate prospect of a conventional military clash with Russia: “The UK – like a growing number of European states – faces a more insidious challenge: the gradual erosion of its resilience through a sustained campaign of sabotage, malign interference and provocation.
“These operations, subtle and dispersed across multiple domains, are designed to discredit European governments, probe for weaknesses in their defences, drain resources and reduce capacity for a coherent, timely response.”
Recruiting on the ground
Intelligence sources also point to an established trend of Moscow recruiting proxies among petty criminals and people desperate for financial reward to further its goals.
It emerged this summer that arson attacks last year on a property linked to former prime minister Sir Keir Starmer were carried out by two men operating under the instruction of an online handler with links to Russia. On Thursday, a Ukrainian man with links to the same Russian state network pleaded guilty to spraying racist graffiti on mosques in east London.
Allegations have also now been made that Russian intelligence services are involved in directly recruiting Britons for potential operations against defence targets.
‘Assassination plots’ and hacking – the other elements of grey zone warfare
Intelligence sources underline that Russia’s hybrid strategy covers a spectrum of activity that is far from being limited to attacks on physical assets.
Court documents unveiled in New York this week accused five men, three of them said to be Russian intelligence operatives, of plotting the assassination of dissidents living outside Russia, alongside plans to fund arson attacks on civilian and military sites at unspecified locations in Europe.
Police deployed an explosive-disarming robot at Leipzig/Halle airport in Germany after a drone was found nearby last month (Photo: Axel Schmidt/Reuters)Among other tools available to Moscow is wreaking havoc in cyberspace.
A senior Nato general last year publicly raised the possibility that Russia could have aided the hugely damaging cyber attacks on Jaguar Land Rover and Marks & Spencer, which shut down key systems at both companies for weeks and inflicted huge financial costs.
“The threats from state actors, non-state actors or those supported by some states are getting more sophisticated and the techniques and tactics used are progressing in a massive way,” Brigadier General Ümit Ersoy, head of Nato’s cyber operations command, said at the time.
A key element of Russia’s strategy, according to some experts, is a desire in Moscow to do everything it can to deepen fractures between Europe and the United States and further the success of populist parties whose agendas are more friendly towards Russia.
John Sipher, a fellow at the Atlantic Council think-tank and a former CIA officer, said Russia will spend the coming months doing its best to influence Western politics with narratives undermining trust in institutions, among them Nato itself.
“For Putin, the present turmoil is an opportunity that may not last. Russia remains weaker than the combined West. Its best strategy, therefore, is not defeating the West but encouraging the West to defeat itself,” he said.
“From Moscow’s perspective, if your adversary is stumbling toward the precipice, this is precisely the moment to give him a push.”
The 24 towns exposed to Russian threats – and the defence manufacturing sites and military bases housed there
Glasgow – BAE Systems, Rolls-Royce, Thales Belfast – Harland & Wolff, Spirit AeroSystems, Thales Fivemiletown – Cooneen Defence Barrow-in-Furness – BAE Systems Bolton – MBDA Telford – RBSL Aberporth – QinetiQ, Tekever Merthyr Tydfil – General Dynamics Glascoed – BAE Systems Bristol – Airbus, BAE Systems, GKN Aerospace, Leonardo, MBDA, QinetiQ, Rolls-Royce HMNB Devonport – Babcock Yeovil – Leonardo Aldermaston – AWE London – Helsing, Palantir Stevenage – Airbus, MBDA Ampthill – Lockheed Martin Derby – Rolls-Royce Sheffield – Sheffield Forgemasters Warton & Samlesbury – BAE Systems Newton Aycliffe – Octric Semiconductors Tyne & Wear – BAE Systems, Leonardo Edinburgh – Leonardo Rosyth – Babcock, QinetiQ Swindon – Tekever, Stark, MoD drone testing facilityHence then, the article about the 24 british towns most exposed to hybrid attack threat from putin was published today ( ) and is available on inews ( Middle East ) The editorial team at PressBee has edited and verified it, and it may have been modified, fully republished, or quoted. You can read and follow the updates of this news or article from its original source.
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