Andy Burnham has been issued a demand by an expert who said Russian hybrid attacks on Europe are expected to continue and escalate. The warning comes amid speculation about what an incursion into Estonia orchestrated by the Kremlin could look like.
No signs of incursion against Estonia
Merili Arjakas, a research fellow at The International Centre for Defence and Security (ICDS), a think tank in Estonia specialising in security, defence and foreign policy issues, and the editor-in-chief of foreign policy magazine Diplomaatia, told The Express there are no signs of Russian agents attempting to enter the country amid the war in Ukraine.
She said: "Currently, our intelligence agencies do not see signs of an incursion against Estonia or another NATO member, as Russia has to keep its troops in Ukraine. What we do see is the increase of the Russian malign activities against Europe – whether we call them sub-article 5 threshold attacks, hybrid operations, state-sponsored terrorist attacks or something else.
Attacks expected to continue and escalate
"As Moscow still hopes that its objective of subjugating Ukraine can be achieved by making us fearful of the Russian response and thereby reducing our support to Ukraine, I expect to see such attacks continue and escalate."
Ms Arjakas then warned: "Herein lies the danger: we have been lucky that such attacks have yet not resulted in a major incident and loss of life."
"Such attacks can also more easily create the confusion of culpability and intent in some NATO countries, which is precisely the kind of uncertainty that Russia would want to exploit to complicate our decision-making."
Demand to the Prime Minister
She suggested that the Prime Minister should next visit the Estonian city of Narva, and issued a demand: "Let’s all buckle up: support Ukraine, learn from its experience, invest in defence, and be prepared to strike back if necessary."
It comes after it was announced that British military drones could keep working in future even when communications go down, as a result of a hoard of battlefield data shared by Ukraine.
Drone makers in the UK are being given access to the information from Kyiv’s Avengers AI Labs, which the Ministry of Defence (MoD) wants to see used to create AI models which allow swarms of the warfighting robots to work during communication blips.
