The four ways Putin is waging war on the UK right now ...Middle East

The UK on Tuesday announced its biggest sanctions package against Russia since the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, targeting dozens of companies and individuals across Russia’s military, energy and banking sectors.

Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper, visiting Kyiv on the fourth anniversary of Vladimir Putin‘s invasion of Ukraine, said the UK had “taken decisive action to disrupt the critical financing, military equipment and revenue streams that sustain Russia’s aggression, in our largest raft of measures since the early months of the invasion”.

But the measures – directed at nuclear and gas companies as well as banks that process cross-border payments to help Russia avoid existing UK sanctions – are unlikely to deter Putin, experts say.

John Foreman, former defence attaché in Moscow, said that British sanctions had so far failed to have a real impact on Russia. “We have a slow puncture on the Russian economy, but it’s not been decisive enough to change Putin’s calculation on the war,” he told The i Paper.

“I think the hopes in 2022, like sanctions would bring Putin to heel, as it were, and sort of change his course and set for peace wasn’t right … They’ll use whatever they can to try and undermine us.”

The Russian President is already waging a so-called “hybrid war” on the UK, involving sabotaging UK infrastructure, cyber attacks and disinformation campaigns.

“Russia’s aim is to weaken the UK from within, to separate the UK from Europe and Europe from North America, reduce our willingness to support Ukraine, and reduce our fighting potential as a country,” said Foreman.

“Could they target the sea cables? Yes. Could they do more GPS jamming? Could they do cyber attacks against more UK companies? Probably, I think that’s very likely. Maybe they will do more of these sabotage actions, like arson attacks.”

1. Sabotage at sea

Russia’s “shadow fleet” – a clandestine network of oil tankers that Russia uses to avoid sanctions – is facing further sanctions as part of the latest crackdown.

Forty-eight vessels and 175 companies in Russia’s “2Rivers” illicit oil network have been targeted in a “clear” message that “Russian oil is off the market” according to the Foreign Office.

Britain’s critical undersea infrastructure, including cables carrying sensitive data, have been subject to suspected attacks from Russian vessels sailing through the Arctic and North Sea.

In November last year, the Russian ship Yantar was seen near UK waters. It is suspected of secretly mapping out Britain’s undersea cables, which transfer around 90 per cent of our data.

Along with the cables are oil and gas pipelines, which the UK is highly reliant on as an island nation, and could easily be sabotaged or exploited if Russia can access them.

On 31 December, Finnish police detained a vessel sailing from Russia under the flag of St Vincent and Grenadines after it was suspected of damaging a telecoms cable running from Helsinki to Estonia. The incident showed how vulnerable Europe’s underwater infrastructure is to Russian sabotage.

British forces helped the US seize Russian tanker Bella 1 last month but since then, more than 100 sanctioned Russian ships have passed through UK waters.

“The list of companies related to the shadow fleet and the oil trading and so on is so long, it shows how amorphous it is, how difficult it is to pin this jelly to the wall,” said Foreman.

2. Sabotage on land

Russia has used its international network to sabotage UK infrastructure in a bid to weaken Ukraine.

Last October, six men were jailed after carrying out an arson attack on a London warehouse providing aid to Ukraine, causing £1.3m in damage on the orders of Russia. The ringleader was recruited by Russian mercenary group Wagner, which is proscribed as a terrorist organisation by the UK.

In May, three men were arrested after a string of suspected arson attacks at properties linked to Sir Keir Starmer.

UK security officials investigated links to Russia regarding the attacks, but it remains unclear as to whether there were any, with Moscow denying involvement.

3. Cyber warfare

In January, the National Cyber Security Centre issued an alert about “the persistent targeting of UK organisations by Russian state-aligned hacktivist groups aiming to disrupt networks”.

Russia has also been known to jam GPS across Europe, with one of the most concerning examples being the jamming of former defence secretary Grant Shapps’ RAF plane as it was flying close to Russian territory in March 2024.

Actions like this from Russia have also affected commercial flights across the continent, forcing some airports, like Tartu Airport in Finland in 2024, to close.

4. Sowing division

Russia has frequently sought to sow division in the UK via political corruption and spreading propaganda. Foreman said Russia had “provided money to political groupings to stir the pot, to weaken the health and vigour of our society from within”.

In November last year, a British MEP and former Reform UK Wales leader, Nathan Gill, was jailed after he accepted bribes from a pro-Russian Ukrainian politician to make statements supporting pro-Russian narratives.

Last April, European agencies found that the Kremlin had set up a network called Pravda, which was spreading Russian propaganda online.

The network operated many largely automated news websites that distorted the outputs of AI chatbots by flooding the large language models with pro-Russian misinformation.

“Political or hybrid warfare is the most likely scenario for Russia to confront the West, not direct military action, because of Nato and nuclear weapons,” said Foreman, but he expressed doubt over how effective the Russian campaign against the UK has been. “I think what’s interesting to me is how little Russia has actually managed to do, because our defences are up and our awareness is up,” he added.

“Are they going to attack us militarily? No, because I think they fear retaliation.”

Tom Keatinge, director at the Centre for Finance and Security at the Royal United Services Institute (Rusi), said the sanctions could have been brought in sooner. “We’ve not leant into the use of sanctions as much as we could have done,” he told The i Paper.

“We need to keep the pressure on. I think we need to be tougher and a bit less piecemeal and recognise that, yes, we may have to take decisions which have negative consequences for our own economies, but that’s the price of supporting Ukraine, who are ultimately the front line in defending Europe.”

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