‘The British public is in the dark over the threat they face from Russia’

‘We’re no longer in a Cold War, we’re in a hot war, we’re no longer fighting the Soviet Union, we’re fighting Russia.’

This is the warning from Sir Bill Browder, a former investor in Russia who has since turned into one of Vladimir Putin’s fiercest critics. He’s spoken to Metro after a particularly tetchy week for Russian-UK relations.

On Tuesday, UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer announced a huge investment for defence so the UK is ‘ready to meet the challenges of our volatile world.’

He continued: ‘Russia is a menace in our waters, in our airspace, and on our streets…we can’t hide from this,’ adding later his Government is ‘seeking peace not conflict.’

Experts have said Russia’s influence in the United States is currently the strongest it’s been in decades, after years of online disinformation campaigns, Russian bots and easing of social media regulations.

They pointed to Donald Trump falsely branding Ukraine leader Volodymyr Zelensky as a ‘dictator’, only to tell Sir Keir Starmer on Thursday: ‘Did I say that? I can’t believe I said that.’

Now they could soon step up their efforts to do the same in the UK, experts and whistleblowers told Metro.

‘One thing we can be 100% sure of is that Russians are going to start splashing a bunch of money around the UK, hoping to buy up influence because that’s exactly what they do everywhere,’ Browder said.

‘The issue is, everyone is focused on their own narrow set of issues. They don’t even recognise this threat. In America, for instance, everyone is in a state of apoplexy about Putin and Trump and how that all worked out.

‘My biggest fear is that Russia pulls off a “coup” as they did in America – where they find welcome reception among people in the UK and use the resources of Russia to elevate the Russians’ political agenda.’

The UK has made strides towards addressing ongoing Russian influence, including establishing the National Security Act 2023, which was set up to protect the UK from ‘espionage, interference in the political system, sabotage, and assassination.’

In January, Foreign Secretary David Lammy said the UK needed to step up the approach to Kremlin disinformation. But those strides and Whitehall’s strategy aren’t enough anymore, experts have said, and they fear Russia could soon turn its focus to the UK government.

‘There still has not been enough communication to the British public about the threat they face from Russia, not just in information space, not just in defence, but in campaigns of undeclared warfare,’ Chatham House Russia Expert Keir Giles told Metro.

‘Democracies can’t defend themselves against threats about which the majority of their voters are simply unaware.

‘As time passes, consecutive British governments are keen to oppose any inquiry into Russian political interference. It just deepens the sense that there is a cover-up.’

Westminster whistle-blower Sergei Cristo said he has spent years trying to warn the UK about the ongoing threat to their democracy from Russian actors.

He was first contacted by Russian diplomat Sergey Nalobin in London, who told him of Russian companies which were interested in contributing financially to the Conservative Party.

Mr Cristo alerted MI5 but said nothing was done until Mr Nalobin quietly left the UK years later. In the time since, Mr Cristo has worked to uncover further interference with UK democracy from foreign actors.

‘It’s up to parliament to decide what the priorities are and what the fundamental threats to democracy are. But for them to do that, we need to know where the threats have come from and in what form,’ Mr Cristo told Metro.

‘Parliament is in the dark and the British public is in the dark. I have a suspicion that Boris Johnson and his government knew exactly what had happened, partly because they were beneficiaries of illicit political funding themselves,’ he alleged.

‘You have to realise – Putin never creates an agenda. He amplifies existing destructive narratives by supporting political movements and fake news to work on that movement.’

In February 2022, Lammy told MPs in the House of Commons that the Tories ‘had accepted £2 million in donations since Boris Johnson took power in 2019.’

When he was questioned about it the following day in Parliament, Johnson replied: ‘We do not raise money from Russian oligarchs…we raise money from people who are registered to vote on the UK register of interests.’

The following day, and two months later in April 2022, Johnson unveiled a number of sanctions against Russia.

‘There are countless incidents of Russian interests connecting very closely with serving British politicians and their party fundraisers,’ Transparency UK Policy Director Duncan Hames told Metro.

‘When it involves donations to their campaigns, politicians have a habit of seeing the Russian, but not seeing the Russian interests.’

Russia sees the United Kingdom as a primary adversary, particularly both historically and more recently because of its leading role in galvanising support for Ukraine.

In November, Putin warned he would hit back at countries supplying weapons being used against targets in Russia after the US and UK gave Ukraine permission to use long-range missiles over the border.

There are worries he could turn his attention to subverting the UK government, as he did in America.

The issue of Russian meddling in UK politics has been raised in Parliament multiple times in the past two decades – but the experts say the true extent of Russian interference on British soil hasn’t been made clear to the public.

Labour MP Tim Roca points out: ‘It is not sufficient to think about Russian interference as simply state actors committing espionage on British soil.

‘It is shameful that the previous Conservative government were complacent in not supporting our intelligence and security services to properly tackle and investigate Russian interference in our democracy.’

In 2020, the British Intelligence and Security Committee published an extensive report outlining the aspects of Russian threats to the UK.

It said that the ‘impact of any such attempts would be difficult – if not impossible – to assess, and we have not sought to do so’, adding: ‘Written evidence provided to us appeared to suggest that HMG [the government] had not seen or sought evidence of successful interference in UK democratic processes or any activity that has had a material impact on an election, for example influencing results.’

A government spokesperson told Metro: ‘It is, and always will be, an absolute priority to protect the UK against foreign interference. 

‘The government is committed to safeguarding the UK’s democratic processes and has established measures in place to protect it.’

Metro has approached Boris Johnson and the Conservative Party for comment.