"Very dangerous times": UK “under-prepared and under attack” as Russian naval incidents increase, Lords warn
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The UK is in “very dangerous times” as the Russian-Ukraine war could spiral into more dangerous situations, Lords have warned.
General Lord (George) Robertson and Ex-First Sea Lord, Admiral Lord West, are both fearful of the consequences of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Discussing the situation on the Lord Speaker’s podcast, the former Nato Secretary General said: “We are under-prepared, we’re under insured, we're under attack and we’re not safe.”
Illicit Russian activity in the English Channel and across the Baltic Sea has been a constant situation this year. Moscow’s spy ship Yantar was seen loitering in the area earlier in 2025, monitored by both HMS Tyne and HMS Somerset.
Other incidents have involved breaking undersea cables, something which Lord Robertson sees as an immediate threat as the Kremlin is “contracting out” ways to sabotage infrastructure targets in a nod to organised crime. He said: “Our undersea cables, which carry 99 per cent of all the data we use, are vulnerable and they're watching them and, in some cases, attacking them.”
He added: “We are living in very dangerous times. When you saw the sight of President Xi, President Kim Jong-un, President Putin, and even the Prime Minister of India, in Tiananmen Square a few weeks ago, it should have put a shiver down the back of pretty well everybody who is concerned about security in the world. They are collectively getting together essentially to...diminish the power of Western values and the West as a whole.”
Amid a debate about whether the UK is investing enough in national security to protect critical infrastructure, he added: “It may well be that when the lights go out, and the hospitals close down, and the data centres melt because the air conditioning has been turned off, then people are going to say to people like us, and people in government, ‘why did you not do something about it?’”
Lord West is concerned that the ongoing conflict in Eastern Europe could descend into something even more dangerous. He also believes that solutions need to be drawn up to maintain a lasting peace. “It’s quite difficult to see how one’s going to get out of this (conflict) because one doesn’t want a full war between Nato and Russia<” he added. “They (Russia) would lose it. And the danger with them losing it is – would they then make that stupid mistake of going nuclear?”
“You've got to have something that ensures that there isn't a breakdown in the peace. That means we'll have people who are willing to fight. You can't just have them there watching...(or) you get the massacres like we had in the Balkans, Rwanda.”