Ever since 18 April, when Theresa May called the election, a key question has been whether Russia would interfere in the democratic process. In Whitehall, that question has been treated as a matter of “when” not “if” Russian interference would occur.
And with good reason. From France and the US to Malta and Montenegro, Russia is accused of having meddled in multiple recent national elections. Such meddling is part of President Vladimir Putin’s efforts to undermine the West – its system, values, and way of life.
Last month, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson warned there was a “realistic possibility” that the Kremlin would interfere in the general election. The US Director of National Intelligence, Dan Coats, recently told Congress that Russia was using sophisticated cyber-techniques to influence the outcome of the election, just as it had done in the 2016 US Presidential vote.
“Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence” is a prudent maxim in security policy, particularly where Russia is concerned. But – for all of the warnings – it is not yet clear that the Kremlin is meddling in the election.
In many respects, this says more about the current state of UK politics than it does about Russia’s ability or willingness to meddle. Over recent years, Russia has demonstrated a capacity to cause electoral disorder. Unlike in the US, however, there is no clear establishment figure in this election for the Kremlin to target. And unlike in France, there is no far-right candidate that warrants Russia’s support.
Both leading parties, the Conservative Party and the Labour Party, are promising to follow through on the results of last year’s Brexit vote. The Conservatives currently lead in the polls – though the size of that lead depends on which poll you look at. The only mainstream party opposed to the UK leaving the EU is the Liberal Democrats, who are polling 7 per cent. And so given that Brexit is what the Kremlin wants, they needn’t intervene to help deliver it.
Putin has spent much of the past 17 years trying to destabilise the West. He has pursued a foreign policy designed to intimidate Russia’s near neighbours, undermine Euro-Atlantic unity, and challenge the post-Cold War international order. He has been unendingly critical of the EU. The values it stands for – universal human rights, equality, and the rule of law – are the antithesis of everything Putin’s regime represents. A key foreign policy goal for the Kremlin has been to divide the EU.
Given the choice between Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party and May’s Conservatives, Putin would likely prefer the former to win the election. Corbyn advocates an isolationist foreign policy, has said he would cut the UK’s defence budget, favours unilateral nuclear disarmament (even if a commitment to Trident made it into the party’s manifesto), and has called for Nato to be “closed down”.
For her part, May was Home Secretary when the public inquiry, led by Sir Robert Owen, into the murder of Alexander Litvinenko was opened and closed – she is well aware of the threat Putin poses.
But Putin is, to some extent, a rational actor: when the polls suggest that the UK electorate will vote for parties committed to doing exactly as the Kremlin wishes, why would Russia risk interfering?
That said, Russia has form when it comes to interfering in Britain’s democratic process. In the run-up to the last general election, in May 2015, GCHQ foiled a cyber-attack by Fancy Bears, the cyber-warfare group linked to the Kremlin. The attack targeted every Whitehall server, including the Home Office, Foreign Office, and Ministry of Defence, as well as all the main UK broadcasters, including the BBC, ITV, and Channel 4. Also known as APT28, Fancy Bears were responsible for the leak of 20,000 emails from the US Democratic National Committee last year.
Russia interfered in the Scottish independence referendum in June 2014. A delegation of pro-Kremlin Russian electoral observers monitored the referendum, concluding – laughably – that the vote “[did] not conform to generally accepted international principles of referendums”. Days after the vote, the leader of the delegation Igor Borisov was the first person to post a comment on a Facebook group called “Rally for a Revote”, which was linked to a petition, on the website Change.org, that collected over 100,000 signatures.
The impact of the petition could have been much bigger. Had it been created on the website of the UK Parliament and had the same number of signatures been collected, then it would likely have been debated in Parliament.
But Britain has woken up to the threat posed during election periods. Following the attempted cyber hack in 2015, the head of the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre, Ciaran Martin, held talks with the UK’s main political parties and put in place a programme designed to safeguard their data and electronic communications. Thus far, that programme appears to be working.
The UK’s anachronistic pen-and-pencil voting system is an advantage, too. Much decried over the years – and not just by advocates of electronic voting machines – the system is less susceptible to outside interference than the electronic system used in the US and elsewhere. Of course, votes can be miscounted, misplaced, or misread. But in the rare instances when this occurs, it tends to be innocent mistakes rather than the work of hostile actors.
And then there is the timing of the election. Whatever May’s motivations for calling the snap election, despite repeatedly saying that she was against the idea of an early vote, the sudden announcement would have given the Kremlin little time to plan a large-scale operation of influence in the UK.
It would be tempting, but mistaken, to assume that Russia has not yet interfered in the election and that it will not interfere in the days before the election or in the weeks after it. The tactics that Russia uses are meant to be below the radar, cloaked in secrecy, and shrouded in plausible deniability.
Moreover, one of the Kremlin’s main goals is simply to undermine democratic processes rather than agitate for a particular candidate of influence the outcome or a particular election. It is notoriously difficult – though not impossible – to measure such an effect.
As a number of countries across Europe prepare for elections, the task for policymakers will be to analyse which elections Russia does meddle in – and which it does not.
