‘There will be consequences’: Putin to PM Burnham regarding UK drones striking deep into the RF

Minutes 18.30 to 27.20

In this omnibus hourly news wrap-up on News X World yesterday afternoon, I was asked to comment on the Kremlin’s warning to the U.K. that its providing long range drones being used in the Ukrainian attacks on energy infrastructure and consumer retailing warehouses deep inside the Russian Federation ‘will have consequences.’

My first point is that the allegations that Britain is supplying such drones did not arise in Russia, which surely knew about them some time ago but said nothing. They came from Britain itself, where about five days ago The Guardian newspaper featured an article on the specific drone models, their manufacturers and the role they have played in Zelensky’s 40-day drone offensive intended to bring Russia to the negotiating table on Ukrainian terms. Indeed, later accounts in other British media including the BBC corroborated this story with glee.

Now we have the Russian assertion that there will be consequences. This has been followed closely by the response of British Prime Minister Andy Burnham, who said that his country will continue to give full support to Ukraine’s self-defense.

The question of the day is what ‘consequences’ Moscow will inflict to punish Britain and to force it to desist. Should this new red line that is being violated go without suitable dramatic reprisals, Russia’s deterrence will further decline to nil and we could then expect other countries, like Germany which have been more reserved, to go full tilt in the drone and missile attacks on Russia.

Let us be perfectly clear: apart from Germany which is viewed as ’enemy number one’ by the Kremlin due to its Nazi-like chancellor, for the broad Russian public Britain is surely the most detested country in the world which it would gladly see erased from the map. Historical enmity between these countries is as well established as that between Russia and France going back to Napoleon. The succession of recent British prime ministers who have been directly involved in doing Russia harm, starting with Boris Johnson, has added to this hatred for Britain.

I used my 8 minutes on air to remind the audience that the Kremlin’s mention of ‘consequences’ bears as much a threat against my own home base of Belgium as it does for the U.K. given the latest version of Russia’s nuclear doctrine which pushes back against NATO’s Article 5 by saying that an act of aggression by any NATO member will be considered an act of aggression by the whole Alliance so that any Member State may be subjected to a Russian nuclear strike whether the given country itself is a nuclear power or not. (only Britain and France within NATO are nuclear powers). Belgium surely has a bulls-eye mark over it in the eyes of the Kremlin being as it is home to NATO, to the U.S. supreme military coordinating center SHAPE in Mons, and with the European Institutions, which are leading the war campaign against Russia, having their headquarters in Brussels. On this basis several days ago I wrote an Open Letter to Belgian Prime Minister Bart de Wever, asking him to show the same courage in defending this country’s finances as he did by opposing Merz and von der Leyen in the European Council last December over confiscation of Russian assets and to now defend the very existence of this country and its people by telling fellow NATO members that they must desist from supplying advanced drones or other offensive weapons to Kiev and must invite the Russians for talks addressing the root causes of the 2022 invasion and to reorganize the security architecture of Europe to bring Russia in from the cold. This Letter has been translated into Flemish and posted on a local internet platform, so that is being broadly read here is assured. I still await a response from the PM’s office.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2026