From Russia, with hate: Russia’s invisible hand in the UK's cost of living, extremism and immigration crises

According to the Office for National Statistics, the cost-of-living crisis has been reported as the greatest issue facing the UK since 2022. Inflation in the UK peaked at 11.1 per cent (a 41-year high) in October 2022. Despite stabilizing in recent years to three per cent, the cumulative effect of rising prices continues to be deeply felt in UK households. Around four in five (or 79 per cent) adults reported that their cost of living had increased compared with one month ago; this is an increase from 67 per cent who reported this in March 2026. Whilst the UK government announced that there is evidence that the cost of living is decreasing, the recent US-Iran war and spike in fuel prices is maintaining public anxieties – not only just about rising costs but also the escalating volatile geopolitical landscape. The rise of the cost-of-living was largely caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine back in February 2022, which led to a sharp increase in gas and oil prices. The UK was also one of the worst affected Western European countries due to its over-reliance on gas. However, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is just the tip of the Russian hybrid warfare iceberg. Russia is waging a constant influence campaign against the UK in an attempt to weaken British democracy from within.

Background

In 2007, at the Munich Security Conference, Russian President Vladimir Putin declared that Russia will not be a passive actor in the unipolar world order, led solely by the United States. Instead, Russia will follow its own path, aiming to establish a multipolar world order. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Russian Federation attempted to become more democratic and even formed an alliance with the US to fight the global “War on Terror”. However, centuries of authoritarianism, corruption, violence and unaddressed imperial legacy made democratization very brief and very unsuccessful, and Russia returned to being an authoritarian state. During the time of the speech, it was not yet known what Russia’s own way would be in the future. However, in 2008, Russia invaded Georgia, making it clear that the way will be imperialism and aggression. A multipolar world in reality meant that Russia wanted its own world order that is not post-colonial but colonial. Putin lamented in his speech that military force is only legitimate if approved by NATO or the UN, and that NATO expansion into Central and Eastern Europe and the Baltics is acceptable at the expense of Russia’s security. In reality, NATO membership for Russia’s neighbours simply would not allow Moscow to reoccupy these territories. Russia is not balancing out the collective West out of goodwill to not allow the US to remain the world’s single superpower. The United States and the broader West remain democratic forces with largely free elections. Russia is a military dictatorship with dozens of colonized indigenous peoples who are brutally repressed to this day. The Russian Federation, like its predecessors, maintains its own “prison of nations”, prohibits all free speech, and violently suppresses all opposition with the sole purpose of conquering further territories to economically exploit and erase nations. Russia is only interested in expanding this colonial ideology, which was becoming more and more difficult to maintain with Washington’s global domination and support for small states’ right to self-determination. Putin’s speech at the Munich conference was, therefore, a declaration of war on global democracy, freedom, human rights and the rules-based order.

What followed 2008 confirmed Russia’s continued imperialism. In 2013, Russia directly interfered in Ukraine’s attempt to join the EU by supporting a corrupt pro-Russian Ukrainian president and later manufacturing a war in Donbas using “little green men” (men in military uniforms without insignia, supported by the Russian military) who claimed to want independence from Ukraine and closer ties with Russia. During the war, Russian-backed separatists shot down the passenger plane MH17 flying over eastern Ukraine, killing 298 civilian passengers. Later in 2014, Russia annexed Crimea in a forced referendum. In 2015, Russia directly supported the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, who was responsible for over half a million Syrian civilian deaths and chemical attacks against his own population. In 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine on falsified historical claims. The invasion of Ukraine poses the greatest security threat to Europe since the end of the Second World War. However, Russia is not waging the war only on the ground and only against its neighbours. Russia engages in successful hybrid warfare operations against the West, including the UK, enhancing some of the greatest crises that affect the UK public today.

Maskirovka

NATO describes hybrid warfare as a strategy that blends conventional military tactics with unconventional methods, such as cyber warfare, disinformation, economic manipulation, lawfare and espionage. It is primarily designed to destabilize an adversary, influence public opinion, and achieve strategic aims without triggering an all-out war. Russia cannot engage militarily with the UK due to the risk of nuclear confrontation and lack of military strength. However, this does not mean that nuclear weapons deter wars or that they change the human desire to engage in war – they just force hostile states to change the definition of war. 

The Russian term maskirovka (literally meaning “masking” or in more abstract terms “deception”) refers to a Russian military concept that has been adapted as part of broader hybrid warfare approaches. The "Resistance Operating Concept", whose primary focus is developing a nationally authorized, organized resistance capability, states that maskirovka is not new to Russia and was largely developed in the 1920s in the Soviet Union. The Resistance Operating Concept identifies maskirovka as a longstanding Russian approach involving active and passive measures intended to deceive adversaries. The USSR exploited existing political and social divisions within NATO member states without ever revealing its degree of involvement. These activities were intended to weaken NATO cohesion from within and create a belief or confusion that the enemy is operating inside when the real adversary was Russia. While maskirovka traditionally focused on military deception, contemporary Russian approaches combine it with information operations and influence activities designed to shape perceptions and decision-making, commonly known as “active measures” (in Russian aktivnye meropriyatiya). General Valery Gerasimov, Chief of the Russian General Staff, in 2013 highlighted the parameters of new generation warfare in which there is no longer a clear distinction between war and peace. In modern warfare, more attention is placed upon information and psychological warfare. This requires the increased use of other means of power, in conjunction with the military, and it has the potential to reduce military power. Psychological warfare, a key component of hybrid operations, is primarily focused on confusing the enemy, dividing opinions, sowing doubts, and not knowing who to believe or who the enemy is. These efforts aim to break the unity and shared purpose of a nation and create a belief that a shared purpose no longer exists. While these principles describe hybrid warfare in general terms, these dynamics have become increasingly visible in UK society, with Russian influence activities identified by UK security services as a challenge to democratic resilience.

Russia’s shadow in the British far right and far left

In 2025, the former Reform UK Wales leader Nathan Gill was jailed for ten and a half years for taking Russia-linked bribes up 40,000 British pounds to promote pro-Russian views in the UK. Whilst the far-right party Reform UK publicly announced it was satisfied that justice was served, party leader Nigel Farage did not launch an internal investigation, despite calls from then Prime Minister Keir Starmer. Nigel Farage’s Reform UK was also given an undisclosed five-million-pound gift by the crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne in 2024, something that was not publicly declared at the time. In 2025, Harborne donated a further nine million pounds to Reform UK – the largest ever single donation by a living person to a British political party. Harborne holds a roughly 12 per stake in the stablecoin operator Tether. A separate investigation by the UK’s ⁠National Crime Agency indicates that these digital assets have been often used by Russian money-laundering operations and to bypass international sanctions. In the same year, the New York Times reported that one of the biggest corporate donors to Reform UK had sold transmitters, cockpit equipment, antennas and other sensitive technology worth almost two million US dollars to a major supplier of Moscow’s blacklisted state weapons agency. The accused British aerospace manufacturer HR Smith Group slammed the accusations for lack of evidence. According to the Leave Russia database, the records do not prove that HR Smith products ended up in Russia. However, they indicate that in some instances an Indian intermediary received equipment from HR Smith and, days later, exported spare parts to Russia bearing the same product identification codes.

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage himself expressed lenient views on Russia. In 2014, Farage said in an interview that Vladimir Putin is the leader he admires the most (as an operator). In 2024, he also implied that NATO’s eastward expansion gave reason for Russia to invade Ukraine (whilst stating that the invasion is ultimately Russia’s fault). Nigel Farage was a frequent paid contributor and guest on the Kremlin-funded broadcaster RT (formerly Russia Today), where he often expressed views that were sympathetic to Russian narratives. Most recently his stance towards Russia has become stricter. However, it is unknown whether this is a truly changed position or response to criticism over his soft and Kremlin-friendly views. Tommy Robinson, another prominent far-right figure that rallies mass anti-immigration protests in the UK, has visited Russia numerous times and also echoes pro-Kremlin views. Most recently, following a near fatal stabbing committed by an immigrant, Robinson called for mass protests and violence in Belfast that left communities devastated, while Robinson himself was visiting Moscow at the time. During the visit, he said that “Russia is not the enemy of the UK” when just a month before, the Kremlin made threats to target the UK with nuclear weapons.

Whilst far-left parties in the UK have historically had less political success in the UK, their Russian connections are nonetheless worth acknowledging. For the far-left fringes, these links are more ambiguous and mostly indirectly driven by ideology. The MPs Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana promoted views that are aligned with the Kremlin’s objectives. At the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Jeremy Corbyn called for a diplomatic solution and to stop providing Kyiv with weapons, a narrative that indirectly also promotes Russia’s strategic interests and removes the right to self-determination for Ukraine. Zarah Sultana’s recent statements that claimed “Putin is a dictator but that Zelenskyy is not a friend of the working class either” further helps Kremlin narratives to blur the lines between aggressor and the victim and undermine the attacked party. Whilst both politicians may not purposely aim to promote Kremlin’s interests in the UK, their rhetoric, influence and reach nonetheless indirectly helps Russia sow doubts about Ukraine’s right to exist and helps Russia in its attempts to colonize Ukraine. Whilst Sultana and Corbyn are right to raise issues around Western neo-imperialism and capitalist exploitation, by doing so recklessly and failing to see the Ukrainian standpoint they turn a blind eye to rampant Russian imperialism. The failure to call out Russian imperialism most likely stems from the inability to understand the non-western standpoint. Ukrainian victims in this case are largely white and do not fit the classic postcolonial view that excludes Eastern European colonization and associates whiteness solely with the colonizer and never the colonized. By doing this, however, both politicians deny agency and the right to exist to Ukrainians, a stance that is deeply concerning from figures who claim to strongly oppose imperialism.

Palestine Action, a far-left UK organization that was proscribed after its members broke into a military airfield in the UK and reportedly vandalized two military aircraft, is reported to receive donations from the American heir James "Fergie" Chambers by way of Chambers covering Palestine Action member’s legal fees. Chambers is a prominent communist and an open supporter of both the Hamas terrorist organization as well as Russia. In a recent interview, he stated “I chant death to America every day. Imperialism is the death of humanity.” However, Chambers visited Donbas in 2022 in support of Russia’s imperialist war against Ukraine. It does not appear that Palestine Action has made any steps to disassociate from this figure or his extremist views. Palestine Action was also reported to have been planning further attacks on RAF bases, where Ukrainian pilots were being trained.

Both far-left and far-right parties and figures in the UK push radical and populist narratives seeking to divide UK society, sow doubt and create an “us versus them” domestic climate, the ultimate goal of Russian hybrid warfare. This ranges from the far right dividing the nation into white British patriots and non-white illegal immigrants or the far left dividing it into fascists and anti-imperialists. The black and white framing eliminates dialogue and ability to see the other side as human, increasing tensions and hostilities across different UK communities.

Disinformation campaigns

To further exacerbate division, Russia also actively engages in mass disinformation campaigns against the UK. These campaigns involve the spread of misinformation and disinformation through various social media platforms using fake or AI-generated accounts to create the impression of mass support. Russian disinformation came to light more prominently after the widespread public allegations that Russia sought to influence the 2016 referendum on the UK’s membership of the EU. In the US, allegations of Russian interference in the US presidential elections in the same year were also in the public domain. Consequently, the Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein authorized a special counsel investigation. This became known as the "Mueller Report" and concluded that Russian interference was "sweeping and systematic" and "violated U.S. criminal law". In the UK, a similar report was published by the parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee in 2020. However, the inquiry did not assess the impact of Russia’s alleged attempts to influence the 2016 EU referendum. In fact, the committee report notes that it would be “difficult – if not impossible” to do so. The report explains that it is important to establish whether Russia took deliberate action with the aim of influencing a UK democratic process. However, the committee was not able to do so because there was no attempt by the UK government or intelligence services to investigate. On the other hand, the report notes that the Kremlin sought to interfere in the 2014 Scottish independence referendum, whereby pro-Russian content creators promoted Scottish secession, comparing the referendum to Russia’s staged referendums in Crimea and eastern Ukraine. There is no concrete evidence that Russian disinformation campaigns swayed the Brexit vote nor it would be possible to prove such a claim. However, some individual cases, the Scottish referendum and the evidence presented by the US about their findings with regards to 2016 US presidential elections strongly demonstrate the capability and willingness of Russia to conduct influence operations against the UK.

Russian disinformation campaigns were also believed to play a part in instigating the anti-immigration riots after the Southport mass stabbings, in which three young girls were tragically murdered. When false information appeared on social media that the attacker was an illegal immigrant and an asylum seeker, it accelerated a mass outbreak of violent disorder across the UK aimed against the non-white population. Some far-right figures, such as Nigel Farage and Tommy Robinson, used the riots to promote their anti-immigration political agenda. It later transpired that the Southport attacker was not an asylum seeker but a British-born Rwandan teenager. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism summarized how a YouTube channel called Channel3 Now, which spread the initial disinformation about the attacker, had tenuous links with Russia a decade earlier. It is empirically difficult to draw conclusions that the disinformation campaign directly caused the outbreak of violence. Most, if not all, disinformation campaigns feed into legitimate topical concerns of the UK public, and indeed, immigration has been reported as the fifth most important issue facing the UK today. The riots could not have been caused by disinformation in isolation but it is likely that the response to the Southport tragedy was grossly influenced by false information about the attacker being an asylum seeker. One of the key aims of Russian hybrid warfare is plausible deniability. Therefore, Russia will engage or take proactive measures where it can mask its involvement in order to create the impression of a false internal enemy. This allows Russia to instigate violence and fear in the UK but place the blame on illegal immigration, for example, when in reality, illegal immigration had no correlation or relation to the horrific attack.

While the above campaigns are some of the most prominent and caused significant threats to the UK’s national security, smaller scale disinformation campaigns seeking to undermine the UK are also rampant on a daily basis. The campaigns involve bot farms and flooding social media with fake comments, pages and articles in order to divide the UK public, seed distrust, reduce dialogue and deepen division, fear and alienation. A Henry Jackson Society report published in 2025 details how disinformation campaigns exert a strong and worrying influence in the UK and where there is a lack of correct information, the disinformation fills knowledge gaps. Disinformation campaigns therefore weaken social cohesion and distract the UK public’s attention from external threats.

 

From a place of hate

It is important to understand that Russia’s hybrid warfare campaign against the UK is not only a matter of geopolitical competition but a historically rooted normalization of violence and aggression. Historically, Russian and British rivalry is well documented – the United Kingdom is the number one civilizational enemy of Russia. Russian national identity has always been more or less shaped against western values. However, Russia feels particular rivalry and disdain towards the UK. Even today, Russian propaganda channels frequently discuss nuclear strikes on different UK cities, anti-British rhetoric and dehumanization. In schools, including Russian schools in London, children are taught to operate battle drones supplemented by new history books that list the UK as the sworn enemy of Russian people. The Kremlin continues to accuse the UK of sea and airspace provocations, rhetoric that has helped Russia justify military aggression in its previous invasions and manufacture consent within Russian society. Recently, a survey revealed that around 28 per cent of Russians named Britain as their number one enemy, even above Ukraine at 22 per cent.

In order to understand why Russia holds such strong negative feelings towards the UK, it needs to be highlighted that Russia’s epistemic reality is fundamentally different to that of the UK. The historical lands where modern Russia originated were occupied by the Mongol Empire between 1237 and 1480. The Mongol occupation was exceptionally brutal and violent, and significantly interfered with the development of culture, the nation state and civil society in Russia for 240 years. The lack of social development resulting from two centuries of violence, repression and terror became somewhat accepted in Russian society and was later further normalized by its long line of authoritarian rulers. The system of serfdom, which holds similarities with western transatlantic slavery, was introduced in the 17th and 18th centuries and further reduced the value of human life. When the Russian Empire emerged, territorial expansion and imperialism became the main drivers of national identity, and violence and aggression became the main means of power, both at home and abroad. Later, the Soviet Union continued with the same approach by attacking and erasing neighbouring countries and repressing their own citizens. This reality remains today. The Donbas region prior to Russia’s involvement was a developed and progressive region of Ukraine. Donbas Stadium hosted some matches for the UEFA Euro 2012 competition. Today, it is a failing, war-ridden territory, robbed of a future and hope. Recent videos from the Ukrainian frontline of Russian soldiers beheading Ukrainians, beating their own soldiers, feeding Ukrainian soldiers to pigs, raping women, men and children, and torturing for leisure reveals the continued normalization of violence and hatred across segments of Russian society. A lack of actions within broader Russian society despite over one million dead Russian soldiers demonstrates continued apathy, a lack of individual agency and little regard for human life. At the same time, Russian society by large continues to support the invasion despite these frontline atrocities and significant Russian losses.

Under attack

The British signals intelligence agency GCHQ recently announced that Russia is “relentlessly attacking UK democracy”. These attacks are not the conventional means of warfare but covert hybrid operations that seek to weaken the UK from within and assign blame to a perceived internal enemy. By dividing the UK through radical politics and mass disinformation campaigns, Russia significantly exacerbates some of the key issues facing the UK public today. Whilst this article covers disinformation and support for extremist ideologies, Russian hybrid operations further stretch to Kremlin-sponsored cyber-attacks, spy networks, sabotage, poisoning attempts on UK soil, and building financial networks and influence within British business, political, academic and social institutions. Whilst the military performance and losses of the Russian army in Ukraine may suggest Russia is weak and miscalculating, the non-military covert means deployed against the UK are proving successful. This can be seen in Reform UK’s electoral successes and outbreaks of violence in Southport, Southampton and Belfast. By using deception and a variety of non-military operations, Russia is convincing large segments of the UK public that the enemy is within. In reality, the real threat to UK democracy sits in the Kremlin.

Gabriele Kaminskaite is a master’s graduate in International Relations from the University of Manchester and an early career researcher. She utilizes postcolonial theory to promote wider understanding of Russian imperialism in its various forms and manifestations. Her thesis argues that the contemporary Russian opposition’s rhetoric is often tainted with imperialist discourse. Gabriele is also the founder of Lithuanian Civil Action, a civic Lithuanian volunteer organisation in the United Kingdom. @gabriellekamin