Russia’s threat to Europe and the UK was a key talking point at the Labour Party Conference in Liverpool this week, with Johanna Baxter MP warning that Vladimir Putin’s aggression “will not stop” at Ukraine.
Speaking at a fringe event organised by the Centre for International Security and Defence Studies, Baxter said the Kremlin continues with “attempts to undermine our democracies” through sabotage, online disinformation and incursions into bordering countries.
The MP for Paisley and Renfrewshire South also raised the plight of Oleshky, a city in eastern Ukraine occupied by Russian forces since 2022. Russia has refused requests for a ceasefire to enable the evacuation of the 2,000 remaining civilians, who are forced to eat weeds due to lack of food. The result is a population, said Baxter, “being starved to death. If anyone tries to leave, they are bombed. If Ukraine tries to deliver aid, it gets bombed.”
Issuing a bleak warning for Europe, Baxter added: Russia “will not stop at Oleshky, or at Ukraine”.
The fringe discussion took place as Ukraine’s capital city Kyiv came under heavy bombardment, with an air raid alert lasting for most of the day. Russian drones and missiles this week attacked a historic university building, a medical centre and essential infrastructure, as well as a school.
Increased attacks on the capital mean “there is now no place to have safety” in the city, said Oleksandr Korniyenko, first deputy speaker of Ukraine’s parliament, who joined Baxter on the panel. Over the previous month “there has been no day where in Kyiv there was more time without air raid alerts than with them”.
For much of the full-scale invasion, Kyiv had robust air defence that meant attacks on the capital were less frequent than on other cities such as Kharkiv and Kramatorsk.
That has changed since Donald Trump cut off most of the US’s military aid to Ukraine, including access to the patriot missiles required to shoot down ballistic weapons. The reduced air defence capacity, said Korniyenko, “is why the attacks are successful”.
Sian Norris
But, said Labour MP Alex Sobel, “Ukraine can win this war.” To support Ukraine’s victory, he said, “we need to use all our foreign policy tools to isolate Russia”.
The event took place a month after prime minister Andy Burnham visited Ukraine and announced the release of classified information on UK components for the long-range missile, SCALP, to establish local assembly lines in Ukraine. Panellists thanked the UK for its ongoing support, with Korniyenko referencing the 100-year partnership promised between the two countries.
Kinetic war abroad, hybrid war at home
Referring to Russia’s ‘hybrid warfare’ against the West, the Centre for Geopolitics’ Victoria Vdovychenko told event attendees that “targeting cognitively is the priority of Russia, to stop support for Ukraine and to sow doubt about what is happening in Ukraine”.
Cognitive warfare is defined as using information and technology to shape how people think, judge, and behave. It uses disinformation and sabotage to weaken democracies and fracture societies, making them more vulnerable to extremism and aggression.
Labour MP and former defence minister Al Carns told attendees at a Think Labour fringe event that “we have allowed other nations to meddle with our hearts and minds through social media disinformation”, referring to Russia’s use of cognitive warfare.
The purpose is to provoke enough division in the British public that it is weak in the face of attacks, or, as Carns’ fellow panellist, the writer and journalist Paul Mason put it, for Britain “to lose the will to fight.”
Pro-Russian disinformation already targets British democracy, often with the help of Putin’s “useful idiots” on the British far right.
Earlier this year, far-right influencer Tommy Robinson travelled to Moscow on a trip funded by the father of billionaire X owner Elon Musk, where he praised Russian society while inflaming far-right riots taking place in Belfast. Andrew Tate, currently under arrest for a series of sexual offences and who uses his online platforms to inflame division and misogyny, was also in Moscow.
Robinson has used his social media to attack any notion that Russia is a threat to the UK, and shared anti-immigration, anti-gender disinformation promoted by Kremlin envoy Kirill Dmitriev. He urges British people not to stand up to Russian aggression, saying “our enemies sit in Westminster, not Russia.” Much of the far right praises Russia as an ‘anti-woke’ country hostile to immigration, women’s rights, and LGBTQ+ rights.
Panellists therefore welcomed Burnham’s recent announcement to create a National Centre for Information Defence, designed to tackle the threat posed by cognitive warfare from Russia and other domestic and international adversaries. The centre’s creation will bring the UK in line with other democracies, including in the Nordic and Baltic countries.
Burnham’s announcement, made at the United Nations General Assembly, was instantly attacked by Reform UK’s Nigel Farage, who accused the centre of resembling the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984, which depicts a totalitarian society.
