UK to focus on Russian paramilitary threat
Russian paramilitaries who “soften up” countries with chemical weapons are to be a major focus of the defence review, the Defence Secretary has revealed. Ben Wallace singled out the shadowy Russian force known as the Wagner Group as an example of how some states are employing deniable units to conduct operations abroad. In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, he said Britain would have to be more resilient, warning such units were being used to “inflict military harm”.
When the Defence Secretary speaks about the threats facing Britain and the Western world today, you’d expect him to single out Russia and China.
But in the eagerly anticipated Defence Review, it seems another rogue actor has caught his attention.
The Wagner Group, a private Russian paramilitary organisation, is, says Ben Wallace, a major “threat of the future” facing Britain.
In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, Mr Wallace warns of the increased use of such proxy forces.
Thought to comprise military personnel and veterans, he says they are likely to be used more to further Russia’s interests, giving the Kremlin a global audience for deniability.
“The threat of the future is the use of proxies to inflict military harm,” he says. “Terrorist organisations or rogue states… the use of things like the Wagner Group, which is over 3,000 Russian non-forces who are using modern weapons to attack people, sometimes our allies. The threat is going to be that countries are destabilised by a range of methods, ranging from cyber attack and corruption to actual military force. We have to be resilient.”
He criticises Russia for seeking to “soften up” countries with activities that fall short of armed conflict – so-called “sub-threshold events”. He says: “At the end of that process [they] walk in or push people out the way or manipulate them. So resilience is going to be our answer. If we have conflict above that threshold, we will still have that capability to deliver hard power.”
The Wagner Group is thought to have been instrumental in the fighting in Ukraine and is currently thought to be operating in Libya, supported by the regular Russian Air Force and backed by the Internet Research Agency, based in St Petersburg and specialists in information warfare.
It is likely it coordinates its activities with Russian military intelligence, the GRU, including the shadowy paramilitary force Unit 29155, considered responsible for the nerve agent attack in Salisbury.
Mr Wallace was speaking to The Telegraph as the MOD put the finishing touches to the Integrated Review of Foreign, Security, Defence, and Development policy.
He is insistent the review should allow the Armed Forces to embrace emerging technologies and be seen as relevant to problems outside its traditional scope.
He says the results of the review are going to be “exciting” and hints there will be changes to major equipment programmes in order to invest in cyber and stealth capabilities.
The Army fears these could hit plans to update a tired fleet of armoured vehicles. The upgrade programme for Britain’s
Challenger 2 battle tanks is considered vulnerable and although the MOD has committed money for a future generation of infantry fighting and reconnaissance vehicles, questions remain about the viability and affordability of such a mixed force.
Mr Wallace denies rumours that Britain will scrap Challenger 2, but does not confirm all 227 will be upgraded.
“We’re not scrapping all tanks,” he said. “We still have a requirement – until technology changes – for armour, both heavy and light.” He added: “The armoured division of today is different to that of 1991… we are talking, ultimately, about lethality and mobility.
“Will we produce very lethal forces? Yes. Will we be able to produce mobile forces? Yes.
“The question then comes down to how do you achieve mass – do you do it through concentration of force, through allies, or in fact do you not need mass because you’ve completely softened up the enemy before you’ve begun, using long-range deep fires, which is, of course, what the Russians have done.
“What hand-held weapons do our enemies have? What deep fires do they have?
“There’s no point in us trundling along if the Russians can pick us off in the way they picked off the Ukrainians with deep fires, deep artillery, 50, 60, 70 kilometres away.
“So that means more investment in electronic warfare and signals intelligence, cloaking. We know if we can be found a lot of us can be killed.”
The Defence Secretary was speaking from Oman, where the MOD today announces a further £23.8million investment in the UK logistics hub at Duqm port. Investment in the Omani port will triple the size of the UK base and facilitate Royal Navy deployments to the Indian Ocean.
Duqm has a dry dock that could support the UK’S two aircraft carriers, HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales, and is close to a 4,000 sq km training area for the Army.
It offers our forces an ideal staging post for operations in the Gulf and further east and reinforces a long-standing defence relationship with Oman.
Although Britain has a naval base in Bahrain, home to four Minehunter ships and a Type-23 Frigate, the waters of the Gulf are too shallow and too close to Iran for the Royal Navy to safely operate the aircraft carriers.
Mr Wallace says: “It’s clear our adversaries around the world have spread out... if we’re going to be more present [as] global Britain, places like Duqm give us lots of opportunity to improve our training and capabilities. If the carrier comes in next year or a flotilla of warships, it’s the perfect location.
“The Integrated Review will obviously affect the scale [of further British investment in Duqm].
“There are other parts of the world where we are looking at similar things.”