The Cool War
Putin’s Twitter trolls are fighting to undermine UK and wreck our economy says Defence Secretary
VLADIMIR Putin is ‘fighting a war’ against Britain on multiple fronts and playing by a different set of rules, the Defence Secretary warned last night.
Gavin Williamson accused Russia of ‘trying to damage British interests’ amid concern that relations with the Kremlin have reached an all-time low.
He said we were in a ‘cool war’ with Moscow – and claimed that UK troops could do more to take on Russian Twitter trolls and dispel their lies as they tried to damage the British Mr Williamson, economy. who was promoted to the Cabinet last month, told the Daily Mail: ‘Russia are fighting a war against Britain on so many different levels. We are in a cool war but one where Russia is incredibly active in trying to do damage to British interests.
‘We should not be complacent about that. We need to make sure our Armed Forces have the resources to deal with it.’ He said that ‘warfare is changing’ and Russia would use ‘any means in which to undermine British and Western interests’. Mr Williamson’s comments come after he sparked outrage on the Left for saying Britons who fought for Islamic State in Syria and Iraq were legitimate military targets. But the newly installed Defence Secretary stood by the comments in which he told the Mail: ‘A dead terrorist can’t cause any harm to Britain.’
His latest broadside – among the strongest comments on Russia from the Government in years – come after Theresa May last month accused Moscow of spreading fake news and interfering in European elections. She warned the Kremlin: ‘We know what you are doing. And you will not succeed.’
It has been claimed that 400 Twitter accounts linked to a Russian ‘ troll factory’ in St Petersburg tweeted about Brexit in the run-up to last year’s referendum.
The revelation fuelled concerns that Moscow had intervened in the vote and rolled out tweets in an apparently co- ordinated attempt to sow discord in the UK.
Asked if British troops could do more to stop the spread of Russian propaganda, Mr Williamson said: ‘I don’t think you can ever do enough to dispel what Russia is doing.
‘They fight by different rules. We have to understand that when they are fighting by different rules we’ve got to change the way we tackle them, that we beat them, that we are able to meet the challenge.’
The Army’s 77th Brigade – dubbed ‘Twitter warriors’ – is a relatively new force, in which some elements focus on social media.
The brigade is designed to ‘meet the challenges of modern conflict and warfare’ by winning hearts and minds through both monitoring and engaging with digital and social media channels.
It is understood they could be used to do more to tackle the myth of Russian propaganda, although the exact details of how this would be done is unknown.
On the propaganda war, Mr Williamson added: ‘We do face a great threat because there are apologists for Russia in this country.’
He slammed politicians on the Labour front bench for wanting to ‘make excuses for Russia’.
‘These are people that want to be prime minister and chancellor of the exchequer,’ he said.
Mr Williamson warned that Britain had to ‘constantly combat the threat’ from Russia and make sure that at ‘every turn we are blocking them’ and ‘countering the threat’ they pose to the UK.
He said Russia was also a threat when it came to conventional war, warning that Moscow was trying to ‘increase its military footprint’. He said: ‘You’ve got a Russia increasing its submarine activity in the north Atlantic tenfold.
‘You’ve got a Russia that is trying to challenge Nato, Britain, the United States in Eastern Europe.
‘You’ve got Russia that is quite content to cause us both economic and military damage if they can do so and looking at how they increase their military footprint. These are all the things that Russia are doing.’