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Russia is poised to attack Britain and has singled out a drone factory and a missile company as legal targets
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It was claimed last night. Senior advisor to Vladimir Putin warned that the highest levels of the Russian government were considering a hybrid attack
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such as sabotage or arson, rather than an outright military strike that would unleash a response from NATO
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Colonel Philip Ingram is a former British Army intelligence officer and joins me on the line now
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It's yet another day and yet another one of Putin's cronies threatening Britain
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How would you respond to this, Colonel Ingram? It is. And Putin's been attacking us on a daily basis
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What they're threatening is nothing new. We've had warehouses in London burn down where they've recruited proxies from organised crime gangs to do it
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Those warehouses contained items to be supplied to Ukraine. We've seen the same thing happen in DHL warehouses, including the UK
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where explosive devices have been put there. We've seen Russian-linked drones with explosives at Leipzig Airport
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We've seen unusual, unexplainable drones over US military bases across the UK
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We've seen cyber attacks from the Russians against targets in the UK
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And we've seen the Russians actively targeting our undersea cables. We are being attacked on a daily basis
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And this is no more than the Russians turning around and saying they now recognise that some of the defence manufacturers
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that are assisting Ukraine or Ukrainian factories that there were in this case
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they're calling them legitimate targets. It's more in the information domain. It's designed to scare people
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But the reality is they are carrying out these sorts of attacks. And how would you personally interpret it
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As you say, I mean, straight after the reporting of the drone facilities and the fact they got links to British companies was reported
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we had that rather bellicose statement from the embassy here in London
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despite the fact there's no ambassador, is there? There's a charged affair. But how would you respond to it
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Would you treat it as just that, as just the same old Russian bellicose sort of rubbish
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coming out of the Kremlin? No not at all You have to put it into perspective The perspective is it the same old bellicose that coming out But that same old bellicose is resulting in probably I would say
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there's been an increased number of attacks over the period of time. The more Russia hurts in what's going on inside Ukraine
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the more there's the overt support from European nations. That's not just the UK
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The more Russia will want to try and strike back. It knows it cannot strike back from a conventional military perspective
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So it will do what it can in what we describe as the grey zone, the sub-threshold zone, activities that are below what would trigger a NATO Article 5 response
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And the volume of that is increasing. And whilst Vladimir Putin sees a lack of spend on defence budgets, he sees a debate going on across Europe as to what should be done around Russia
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He sees fractures in our collective response. And he's exploiting those fractures
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and this is where we need to wake up to the real threat because at some stage you may say that actually
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it is worth going into more conventional military tactics. I suppose what I'm suggesting though
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is it shouldn't change our approach to Ukraine to the way that we're supporting that country
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No, not at all. If anything, what it should do is it should embolden us to support Ukraine further
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because the only way we're going to stop this, even if there is a peace settlement in Ukraine tomorrow
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where the front lines were frozen and there was no real answer to the war, Putin will continue this sort of action and he'll likely increase it as he rebuilds his military
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So the only way we're going to stop this from a long term perspective is for Ukraine to defeat Russia and Vladimir Putin's regime to collapse
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And what is the regime of Vladimir Putin in terms of his sort of current standing
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I read of all sorts of domestic problems that do pop up. But I wonder, we know that, I mean, President Zelensky of Ukraine is having to deal with the comments
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the sort of ongoing commentary from his former defence minister. But I wonder of Vladimir Putin and his domestic situation
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Well, President Zelensky is actually living in a democracy, and we seeing the results of that where fraudulent activity is being called out and senior people are being arrested and prosecuted for us But President Putin doesn do that And he runs his ship very tightly
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He's got all these oligarchs around him. The oligarchs are running criminal networks
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as well as are in senior government positions and senior positions across industry in Russia
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But if anyone steps out of place, they can be replaced. So they rely on Vladimir Putin being there
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being the dictator, enabling them to do what they're doing. And that's why we find that any oligarch that sort of says something against Putin
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or against the war tends to take up window cleaning and fall out of the nine-floor window
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And that creates a fear amongst it. The Russian people have believed until now what Putin has put out to say
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that this is an existential war to look after Russian people in Ukraine
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and now he's changed his language to say it's an existential war against NATO
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The Russian people are by and large still behind Vladimir Putin. However, they're starting to question his ability to protect them
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given the attacks against oil and gas infrastructure and the increasing fuel price rises and scarcity of fuel
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and the attacks that the Ukrainians are putting in against the Wild Breeze and ozone logistics warehouses
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so that the Russian equivalent of Amazon Prime is not delivering their goods on time
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and the Russian people are beginning to realise that this war is coming home to them
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And that's the green shoots of something that will question Putin's real authority
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The British Army, this is in the Times, rejected more than 200 aspiring soldiers each day last year
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despite the military facing a manpower shortage. Almost 74,000 applicants, which the paper tells us is enough to fill the ranks of about 18 full-strength brigades
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were rejected by the army in 2024 to 2025 which was an increase of 20 000 on the previous year
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i mean on the face of it you have to wonder what's wrong with 20 000 or 74 000 people who wanted to
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join the army who were rejected i mean clearly there a high bar but are we missing out on some people there do you think major fox i think the system is the problem rather than the people applying through it so after i left the army i was briefly teaching at the royal military academy sandhurst and i speak to the new officer cadets who are coming through the system and and more
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often than not they had a horror story about negotiating their way through the capita run
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system that manages army recruiting um certainly there is a sort of tick box approach where
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computer quite often says no and then the appeals process to get through that is incredibly
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torturous um so actually for some of the cadets i taught it was a real testament to their desire
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to join the army that they'd actually bothered pushing through the process to get to the start
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line of their first day of training so since the army outsourced this kind of recruiting pipeline
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to a civilian company these sorts of flaws have become more and more common well we often hear
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these headlines that we've got the smallest army size since the napoleonic wars and yet we're
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talking about a whole host of people who would seem to me to have i mean completed the process
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they were just rejected in the i would assume in the latter stages too i mean i appreciate you're
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not involved in this particular instance but but what sort of things would we be talking about do
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you imagine so something as simple as childhood asthma can be a problem so if that if that's
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cropped up in your medical records when they do the check that's an instant disbarrel no matter
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no matter if you're competing uh you know at international level sports the fact that you've
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got asthma on your record can be enough um likewise any sort of mental health condition can uh can be
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a problem as well um for clearly very good reasons but obviously that is a very wide spectrum
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um where there are some mental health things in someone's past that might be no bar whatsoever to
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military service and yet that isn't a medical hurdle they have to appeal and jump through
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So small things like that can cause people's rejection. It could be something as simple as them filling out the form incorrectly and not having the required details
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So it's a very broad span of possible reasons. But I think the fact the number is so high is indicative of the fact that this system is clunky, it is bureaucratic
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and it makes life very difficult for someone who wants to take the very noble step of signing up to serve their country
