Russia has issued a fresh threat against British industry, warning that factories supplying drone and missile components to Ukraine could face “semi-military action.”
The warning came after the UK confirmed it had handed Ukraine the technical blueprints needed to manufacture its own Storm Shadow missiles.
Kremlin Adviser Raises the Stakes
Andrei Fedorov, a senior adviser to Vladimir Putin, made the comments during an appearance on BBC Newsnight, telling viewers he could not rule out action against firms producing military hardware for Kyiv. He stopped short of naming Russia as the culprit, instead suggesting that any strikes on British manufacturers would come from unnamed actors rather than the Russian state directly. Fedorov specifically pointed to companies producing drones and Storm Shadow components as potential targets, floating the idea that “something might happen with enterprises” involved in that supply chain.
He also argued that Britain’s decision to share Storm Shadow production knowledge amounted to direct military involvement in the war, one that had effectively pushed the conflict beyond Ukraine’s own borders.
A War of Words With Downing Street
The Newsnight remarks followed a sharper exchange earlier the same day. The Kremlin accused Prime Minister Andy Burnham of inflaming the conflict by sharing the missile blueprints, prompting a pointed retort from Number 10 asking who had started the fire in the first place.
The exchange came as Burnham made his first visit to Kyiv as Prime Minister, where he criticised Russia’s threats against Britain as “outrageous” and chaired a meeting of the Coalition of the Willing alongside France’s Emmanuel Macron and Germany’s Friedrich Merz. Macron reportedly used the meeting to press allies to accelerate deliveries of interceptor systems, citing a recent string of deadly strikes on Ukrainian cities.
Sabotage Fears Already Realised
The Telegraph’s sources suggest Moscow’s threats are not merely rhetorical. Western intelligence contacts told the paper that Russia has already been running a covert sabotage campaign against European arms manufacturers, with unexplained fires and explosions recently striking drone and ammunition factories in Italy, Bulgaria and Estonia. According to those sources, the Kremlin has been using local criminal networks to carry out the attacks, calibrated to stay just below the threshold that would trigger Nato’s Article 5 mutual defence clause.
Britain’s own vulnerability to hostile cyber activity was underscored days earlier, with reporting that hackers linked to Iran had knocked out a British power plant for four days.
Deepening UK-Ukraine Cooperation
Despite the threats, Britain’s support for Kyiv shows no sign of slowing. During his visit, Burnham received a substantial trove of Ukrainian intelligence intended to help the UK guard against Russian spies and saboteurs, with Britain becoming the first country granted access to Kyiv’s “Avenger” database, a repository holding millions of images of Russian military hardware gathered over the course of the war. That imagery is expected to be used to train detection systems at British military sites.
Burnham is also reported to be planning a trip to Washington next month to press Donald Trump on licensing Ukraine to produce Patriot interceptor missiles domestically, as Russia continues to exploit gaps in Kyiv’s air defence stockpiles with ballistic missile strikes.
Fedorov, for his part, suggested Britain’s Nato membership only heightens the risk of Russian retaliation.
Main Image: MOD Crown Copyright News / Editorial Licence.
