Britain needs a new Russia policy by Duncan Allan and Ian Bond
Press articles by British defence secretaries rarely cause much of a stir – unexciting pieces on defence reform are the norm. But Ben Wallace’s January 17th article on the situation in Ukraine is an exception: point by point it refutes Russian President Vladimir Putin’s claims about the threat that Ukraine and its Western partners supposedly pose to Russia, ending with a warning about what a Russian attack on Ukraine would mean for the rest of Europe. Wallace’s line reflects the UK’s 2021 Integrated Review of security, defence, development and foreign policy, which described Russia as “the most acute direct threat to [the UK’s] security” in the 2020s. The government’s analysis is good and shows how far UK views have evolved since the 2010 Strategic Defence and Security Review, which had little to say about Russia, and even less that was critical. Now the UK needs a strategy to go with the analysis. Russia’s current menacing activity around Ukraine should be a crystallising event for UK policy. Putin has deployed sizeable forces to threaten Ukraine, and in effect demanded that NATO accept a Russian sphere of influence in Central and Eastern Europe. The UK has responded more robustly than most NATO allies to the pressure on Ukraine: it has supplied the Ukrainian armed forces with around 2000 anti-tank missiles, and sent 30 service personnel to train the Ukrainians in their use. But while strong words from the defence secretary and firm support for Kyiv are useful, they need to be part of a coherent overall strategy. Russia fights its enemies in domains stretching from
disinformation and influence operations through gas supply reductions and cyber-attacks to fullscale military conflict. The UK needs a similarly broad strategy for dealing with Russia. Such a strategy should start at home and work outwards. The first priority should be the protection of UK territory, citizens and institutions. That is partly a military task. It also involves cyber defence, traditional counterespionage and hardening British society against disinformation. Despite concerns about Russian efforts to influence the 2014 Scottish independence referendum and the 2016 Brexit referendum, little has been done to investigate, let alone prevent repetition. But the most important task of all should be combating illicit financial flows from Russia and frustrating the Russian regime’s cultivation of UK political parties and opinion-formers, which threatens Britain’s democratic institutions. The Parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee’s 2020 report on Russia highlights the problem that wealthy members of the Russian elite, well connected in Moscow, are also donors