‘Russia is ready to kill us by the thousands’
Defence Secretary warns that Moscow could cause mass casualties by crippling crucial energy supplies
RUSSIA could cause “thousands and thousands and thousands” of deaths in Britain with an attack that would cripple the UK’S energy supply, the Defence Secretary warned today.
Gavin Williamson told The Daily Telegraph that Moscow had been researching the UK’S critical infrastructure and how it connected to Continental power supplies with a view to creating “panic” and “chaos”.
Delivering a stark assessment of what he says is the threat from an increasingly aggressive Kremlin, he said Russia was willing to take action “that any other nation would see as completely unacceptable”.
Mr Williamson, who is considered to be a possible future Tory leadership contender, gave his warning during an interview at the outset of a five-month-armed Forces review in which the Ministry of Defence is trying to secure more money to stave off cuts.
The Chief of the General Staff, General Sir Nick Carter, this week delivered a speech warning that the Army was struggling to keep up with Russian military advances. And Mr Williamson told The Telegraph that Russia was spying on our critical infrastructure and asking “How can we hurt Britain?”
He said: “The plan for the Russians won’t be for landing craft to appear in the South Bay in Scarborough, and off Brighton Beach... they are going to be thinking, ‘How can we just cause so much pain to Britain?. Damage its economy, rip its infrastructure apart, actually cause thousands and thousands and thousands of deaths, but actually have an element of creating total chaos within the country’.”
He said Russia was looking at the energy lines that link the UK to Continental supplies and allow Britain to trade and share electricity and gas. The UK currently has four undersea interconnectors for electricity and three for gas, which provide energy to three million homes – which will rise to eight million when further connections are built.
Mr Williamson said: “Why would they keep photographing and looking at power stations, why are they looking at the interconnectors that bring so much electricity and so much energy into our country? They are looking at these things because they are saying, ‘These are the ways we can hurt Britain’.
“What they would do is cause the chaos and then step back,” he said. “This is the real threat that I believe the country is facing at the moment.”
Ciaran Martin, the chief executive of GCHQ’S National Cyber Security Centre, has said recent Russian cyber hacking included attacks on the energy sector.
Mr Williamson said the Russian interest was not about “copying our infrastructure” to roll out something similar “east of the Urals”. “What they are looking at doing is trying to spot vulnerabilities ... they want to know how they can kill infrastructure.”
He said sabotage could come from a cyber attack, from undersea activity or even from a missile.
The Chief of the Defence Staff, Air Chief Marshal Sir Stuart Peach, warned before Christmas of the vulnerability of Britain’s undersea internet communications cables.
Last night, Lord West, a former First Sea Lord and security minister, said he was “absolutely certain Russia was looking at how to get into our critical national infrastructure”.