UK defence secretary tells MPs the Russian threat is 'real and rising,' speeds air-defence aid to Ukraine
Defence Secretary John Healey told the House of Commons that Russia poses a "significant and persistent" threat to the UK and conducts hostile cyber-activity, disinformation and sabotage against NATO allies "almost daily." He said he had ordered UK air-defence deliveries to Ukraine accelerated and would chair this month's 50-nation Ukraine Defence Contact Group at NATO headquarters, telling Vladimir Putin: "we see you; we will expose you." Healey cited past disclosures -- the Russian spy ship Yantar shadowing British undersea infrastructure and a covert submarine programme in UK waters -- and said the public must grasp that the threat is real and rising.
Russia poses a significant and persistent threat to the UK and to Atlantic security, Defence Secretary John Healey told the House of Commons, noting that Vladimir Putin's illegal war against Ukraine is now in its fifth year. "Russia conducts hostile cyber-activity, spreads disinformation and carries out sabotage against the UK and many other NATO allies almost daily," he said, adding that European security "started in Ukraine."
In response to recent Russian attacks, Healey said he had directed that UK deliveries of air-defence systems to Ukraine be accelerated, and that he would chair the next meeting of the 50-nation Ukraine Defence Contact Group at NATO headquarters this month to step up the military aid provided to Kyiv. Pressed by the Labour MP for Glasgow South, Gordon McKee, on whether the government would do more to communicate the scale of Russian hybrid warfare, Healey said the threat needed to be better understood by both Parliament and the public: "The Russian threat against the UK is real and rising, and it is important for the public and Parliament to understand that."
He pointed to disclosures made over the past year, including that the Russian spy ship Yantar had been monitoring British critical undersea infrastructure and what he described as a month-long covert Russian submarine programme in and near UK waters. He closed with a direct message to the Russian president: "I say to Putin: we see you; we will expose you; and we will not stand for you targeting the UK." The exchange came a week after the director of GCHQ used an annual lecture to describe the UK as relentlessly targeted by Russian aggression, accusing Moscow of going after British critical infrastructure and democratic processes.
The Labour MP for Altrincham and Sale West, Connor Rand, pressed for closer cooperation with the European Union, arguing that British leadership on Ukraine had placed the UK in the firing line of an increasingly desperate Putin. Healey said the government was right to seek a closer relationship with the bloc within what he called a "NATO first" framework, citing the security and defence partnership signed with the EU last year, and said the Prime Minister had indicated the UK was looking to join the EU's Ukraine loan scheme to provide more aid to Kyiv backed by British industry. The Yantar, an oceanographic vessel widely assessed to be used for intelligence-gathering, has been tracked near undersea cables and pipelines around the UK and northern Europe, part of heightened NATO concern over the vulnerability of seabed infrastructure carrying power, data and gas.