I ran the CIA – Putin is prepared to use terrorist gangs to attack the UK

Russia may hire gangs to launch covert terrorist-style attacks on the UK in retaliation for British supplies of missiles and drones to Ukraine, a former CIA director has said. David Petraeus, who led the US spy agency under Barack Obama, told The i Paper that Vladimir Putin feels too vulnerable to risk directly attacking a Nato member, but is open to “using gang members to carry out something that would not be as clearly attributable to the Russians”. His warning coincides with Andy Burnham agreeing to provide Ukraine with designs to produce Storm Shadow cruise missiles, capable of hitting targets up to 150 miles inside Russian territory. The Prime Minister travelled to Kyiv on Monday to make the announcement with Volodymyr Zelensky, after it was recently revealed that Ukraine had been using British-made drones for long-range attacks on targets in Russia – which has threatened “consequences” in return. Shorts Russia’s embassy in London has accused Britain of seeking to “inflict maximum damage” on the country, saying last week: “The deeper its involvement in the conflict… the higher the price it will pay.” Petraeus believes Putin is becoming “more worried” about his “clear inability” to stop Ukrainian strikes on warehouses and oil refineries, “a very clear weakness that can’t be papered over”. But the retired general thinks the Kremlin is prepared to hit British targets through hybrid warfare, under the cover of plausible deniability to avoid links to Moscow. He also urged the UK to revolutionise its Armed Forces by replacing tanks with drones, and suggested the US may continue bombing Iran for “a long time” to make Tehran surrender comprehensively. Petraeus was appointed as CIA director by Barack Obama (Photo: Brendan Smialowski/Getty) Petraeus became a household name while commanding coalition forces, including British troops, during critical periods of the wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Speaking from the US state of Virginia, he said the Kremlin would be planning ways of hitting Britain that do not require a military strike or violent actions by Russian agents themselves. Petraeus said: “Putin has been willing to do everything up to and including assassinations in the past, as the UK knows very well, having experienced that… He has been carrying out various grey-zone activities.” He added: “There should be expectations of more of that kind of activity.” He suggested that two incidents in Europe this month which have been blamed on Russia – an alleged plot to kill a US citizen in Poland, and an attempted drone attack on a German airport – indicate the methods that could be used. The Russian authorities have not commented on the Polish case but said the drone claim was “contrived provocation” intended to help Ukraine. German investigators say a trace of DNA appears to link the drone bomb to a plot in 2024 that caused a fire at a warehouse in Birmingham in 2024 and could have blown up a plane bound for London, after explosive devices were sent across Europe in air-mail parcels. Five men are currently on trial in Lithuania for their alleged part in that case, charged with carrying out terrorist offences on behalf of Russian intelligence. They deny the charges. The MI5 Director, Sir Ken McCallum, has previously cautioned that Russia is “turning to proxies for their dirty work, including private intelligence operatives and criminals”. While commanding Nato troops in Afghanistan, Petraeus met David Cameron at Downing Street in 2011 (Photo: Dan Kitwood/WPA Pool/Getty) Why Putin will be feeling ‘very worried’ Petraeus believes Putin has “real limits” on any bigger ambitions against Nato while his forces are suffering “horrific losses” of more than 1,000 troops being killed or wounded every day in Ukraine. He said it was significant that the Kremlin had deployed paramilitary units to guard petrol stations amid widespread fuel shortages, after “the Ukrainians have so impressively hit every single refinery within 3,000 kilometres”. Attacks on huge distribution warehouses, including sites run by the country’s biggest internet retailer Wildberries, are also having a “devastating impact” on the Russian war effort and its economy, he said. Petraeus added that Putin is “very worried” about Crimea, the Ukrainian territory which Russia annexed in 2014, because the peninsula’s fuel and energy supplies have been “cut off”. “That was his crown jewel, and it is now becoming an albatross around his neck,” he said. “The Ukrainians have taken out every refinery, fuel storage location, electrical generation… The lights are literally going off on a regular basis. The internet is out, and there’s no gasoline for sale to civilians.” Asked if he thinks Putin may be paranoid about being ousted in a coup, he said: “As with all authoritarian regimes, it is inconceivable that it could be toppled until the day after it’s been toppled, when you say it was inevitable.” Petraeus added that a fresh security crackdown ahead of parliamentary elections next month suggests Putin is “worried that opposition will not only emerge but then reach a critical mass” if it is not suppressed. Petraeus meeting Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace in 2011 (Photo: Stefan Rousseau/WPA Pool/Getty) How the UK military should turn from tanks to drones A graduate of the famed military academy at West Point, Petraeus holds a doctorate on American failings in Vietnam and co-wrote the US Army’s manual on counterinsurgency fighting. He led coalition forces during the US troop surge in Iraq from 2007 to 2008, before overseeing Nato operations in Afghanistan between 2010 and 2011. He was then appointed CIA director, running the intelligence agency for just over a year. He resigned in late 2012 over an affair with his biographer, Paula Broadwell, and pleaded guilty to providing her with classified information, being fined $100,000. He remains one of the world’s most respected experts on military strategy, lecturing on global affairs at Yale University, and is co-author of the book Conflict: The Evolution of Warfare from 1945 to Gaza with British author Andrew Roberts. He is also a partner at the investment firm KKR. Next month, Petraeus plans to address the House of Lords on how the Ministry of Defence should embrace technology – including autonomous weapons – to radically modernise the Armed Forces. Petraeus oversaw the US troop surge in Iraq, under President George W Bush (Photo: Win McNamee/Getty) Although there are “legitimate” concerns about the army, navy and air force being weakened by years of underfunding, he believes they are “nimble” enough to reform quickly. “The UK is positioned almost uniquely to carry out urgent, revolutionary, transformative, institutional change in its military that doesn’t require vast new sums of money or large numbers of troops,” he said. This would involve “not just giving drones to a tank unit, but actually replacing it,” he explained, because conventional forces “find it difficult to survive on the battlefield in Ukraine, which is the laboratory for the future of war”. Petraeus has visited Ukraine 10 times since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in 2022 and said the way its military had adapted in that time was “breathtaking”. @robhastings.bsky.social