Putin is out to destroy the UK and Europe. If we don’t accept that, we’re doomed

These two recent examples neatly highlight that the problem isn’t confined exclusively to either the right or the left, but are typical of the genre: confident, overly-simplistic statements made by comfortable commentators who have spent little, if any, time in the region they are so happy to opine on. 

They also demonstrate a wider problem of people who should know better sticking their heads in the sand, despite years of Russia repeatedly escalating its hostility towards Europe. In the last year alone, Putin has violated NATO airspace, sponsored sabotage attacks on British infrastructure and sent spy ships into our waters. 

It is impossible to know exactly why so many are still denying reality. A theory popular among people who have travelled to Ukraine during the war is that those back at home cannot bring themselves to accept that a systemic campaign of aerial bombardment is happening in Europe, rather than somewhere like Syria or Afghanistan. Believing simple narratives, like the Kremlin threat can be fixed by negotiating a deal or that Putin simply wouldn’t dare repeat it over here, is more comforting than accepting that in the eyes of the Kremlin, we are already at war and that Russia is winning. 

Suggested Reading

We are Putin’s next target

Paul Mason

As Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine drags into its fifth year and Putin seems hell bent on cementing his status as the worst warlord of his generation, it might be a good time to start seeing the world through his eyes. Understanding exactly how much he hates the West, particularly Britain, might be the only way to shake those still seeking comforting caveats out of their complacency. 

“Russia does not see Britain or Europe as peripheral actors. It sees them as strategic adversaries whose power should be degraded, constrained, and intimidated short of open war,” says Jade McGlynn, a leading expert on European security who has spent extensive periods of the war inside Ukraine. 

“Russia is engaged in irregular warfare against European states: sustained information campaigns, cyber operations, sabotage, arson, intimidation, and proxy activity designed to remain below the threshold that would trigger a conventional military response,” McGlynn says, adding that Russia “consistently frames Britain in particular as a hostile, illegitimate actor and a legitimate target for nuclear or other forms of attack. Russia sees Britain as a civilisational enemy, while Britons have little idea how much hatred Russia has for them.”

This shouldn’t be particularly surprising to Brits. Putin has ordered assassinations on our soil, his associates are linked to arson attacks at logistics hubs, he has sent the Yantar spy ship to survey our waters. He has violated European NATO airspace and not been punished for doing so. 

He says he cannot negotiate with Europe’s current crop of leaders because they are “little pigs” who want Russia to collapse for their own profit. He and his cronies will only negotiate with the Trump administration officials, who each and every time allow Putin to dodge peace, kick the can down the road and continue his escalations. 

Now, put yourself in the shoes of Putin and what conclusions would you reach from all of the above? 

That you can carry out hostile sabotage campaigns and murders in Britain, a nuclear power, and not face any consequences that trouble you greatly. That you can test NATO’s airspace, dare them to retaliate, and get little more than a vacuous social media post from the West’s supposed leader: “What’s with Russia violating Poland’s airspace with drones? Here we go!” That you can repeatedly lie not just to an international community that you detest, but that you can do the same to your supposed ally in America and be rewarded with a red carpet visit to Alaska.

If you were sitting in the Kremlin, what would you make of a country like Britain repeatedly saying that it wasn’t ready to fight a war, but that it also didn’t believe you were about to invade them?

When this paradox is viewed from a purely defensive, British perspective, it presents a number of hypothetical questions. Should we really be spending billions on defensive hardware if we don’t think it will be used? Should we be supporting Trump’s efforts to negotiate a ceasefire that brings the war to an end as quickly as possible, even if it screws over Ukraine? 

There are hundreds more of these hypothetical questions that, when considered by someone in Moscow, indicate a number of opportunities for escalation. If Britain doesn’t believe it could beat you in a fight or that America would come to its aid, how far can you push it with irregular warfare before it retaliates? Where is the line? How many fires in DHL centres, attacks on undersea cables, cyber attacks or incursions into British water can you get away with? Will Britain push back if you use disinformation attacks to incite violent riots? What about more poisoning attacks on dissidents that accidentally kill British citizens?

At the start of the article, I said there are too many people in Britain who see the Russian threat as beginning and ending with conventional warfare – will Russia do to us what it is doing in Ukraine? The truth is that the threat is more opaque and the line between war and peace changes constantly. 

None of the examples above are far-fetched or imagined. They are all things that have happened, that could happen again and from a Russian perspective, are acts of war that have gone unpunished. Until we accept how Putin views us – and take serious steps to punish his aggression – we continue to fight a war on his terms, not our own.