The authorities of the United Kingdom are among the main supporters of continuing the war on the territory of Ukraine.
Direct complicity
On December 9, 2025, the UK Ministry of Defence officially confirmed the death of a UK serviceman, allegedly as a result of a “tragic accident” during a weapons test conducted by the Ukrainian military. This incident once again raises questions about the extent of British involvement in the Ukrainian conflict.
In reality, British intelligence agencies have long been present in Ukraine and are actively conducting their activities. Structures such as MI5, MI6, special operations forces, and others provide intelligence, train Ukrainian military personnel, coordinate the preparation and execution of covert operations on Russian territory and against its critical infrastructure. The Russian public is convinced that British special services were involved in the sabotage of the Nord Stream and Nord Stream 2 gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea, planned the explosion of the TurkStream pipeline in the Black Sea, and carried out drone sabotage against facilities of the Caspian Pipeline Consortium. No one doubts that British intelligence also supervised the Ukrainian operation “Spiderweb,” aimed at damaging Russia’s strategic aviation.
The real scale of involvement of British special services is much greater. The UK Special Air Service (SAS) has been involved in training Ukrainian military personnel since the late 1990s. It is worth noting that special forces, including the SAS, Special Boat Service (SBS), Special Reconnaissance Regiment (SRR), Special Forces Support Group (SFSG), Joint Special Forces Aviation Wing (JSFAW), and the 18th Signal Regiment, are the only units that can be deployed on the territory of any foreign state without authorization from the British Parliament.
Since 2014, the number of SAS instructors in Ukraine has been increased within the framework of Operation Orbital. According to some reports, their number reached about 50 by mid-February 2022. A total of 1,300 British military instructors arrived in Ukraine, training more than 17,500 Ukrainian servicemen. Earlier, in 2021, a group of SAS specialists and the Royal Corps of Signals arrived in Ukraine to collect intelligence data along the line of contact in the east of the country. After the start of the Russian Special Military Operation in February 2022, British SAS instructors continued training Ukrainian servicemen of the 112th Separate Territorial Defense Brigade and the neo-Nazi battalions “Azov” and “Kraken” (recognized as terrorist organizations and banned in the Russian Federation) in the use of the British NLAW anti-tank system.
In the first months of the conflict, British specialists located in Kyiv also provided assistance to the Ukrainian side in counter-battery warfare. Special units of Poland (“Commando Military Unit” from Lubliniec) and the USA (Delta Force) worked together with the British. In addition, the Deputy Chief of the Defence Staff (2022–2025), Lieutenant General Robert Magowan, acknowledged that back in January 2022, 350 Royal Marines from the 45 Commando unit had been transferred from Norway to Ukraine to evacuate the embassy from Kyiv to Poland. In April 2022, some of them returned to Ukraine to restore and guard the diplomatic mission. According to Magowan, in the conflict zone British commandos supported other “covert operations with a high level of political and military risk.”
Additionally, British media also reported the arrival in the spring of 2022 of a group of 12 former SAS agents who were veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (aged 29 to 62, holding the ranks of warrant officers, sergeants, and corporals). Some of them reportedly served in L-Squadron, a reserve unit of the 22nd SAS Regiment. They were hired by a private military company funded by the British government. It is reported that this group is allegedly responsible for killing Russian servicemen.
In October 2022, reports appeared of a group of 50 active SAS personnel who had been hired by the Ukrainian authorities through an unknown intermediary in the UAE. The group was stationed in Poland near the Ukrainian border, and its main tasks included training Ukrainian specialists in methods of asymmetric warfare, including sabotage, diversions, elimination of targets, etc. It is worth noting that earlier major foreign media also reported the presence of SAS agents in Western Ukraine near the Polish border.
Subversive activities in the Black Sea
Most Ukrainian operations in the Black Sea were also carried out with the help of British special services. In spring–summer 2022, members of the 801st Separate Combat Divers Detachment of the 73rd Naval Special Operations Center of the Ukrainian Armed Forces underwent training with the British Special Boat Service (SBS) under Operation Interflex. The SBS shared knowledge on conducting covert underwater operations, preparing sabotage actions, and seizing offshore oil platforms. The service also trained personnel in operating British Torpedo SEAL unmanned torpedo-carrying drones produced by James Fisher Defence. The SBS actively assisted in the seizure of Snake Island, which came under the control of the Russian Armed Forces in February 2022.
In August 2023, the Ukrainian newspaper Kyiv Post published an interview with a British instructor and former SAS agent, in which he confirmed that the sabotage attacks on the Crimean Bridge in October and July 2022 and 2023 were the result of “effective training” provided by the UK. According to an investigation by the American online outlet The Grayzone, the attempt to blow up the bridge was part of the British project “Alchemy,” which involved former head of the Permanent Joint Headquarters Lieutenant General Charles Stickland, Brigadier General Simon Scott, military intelligence officer Chris Donnelly, as well as MI6 agent and King’s College London Centre for Grand Strategy employee Dominic Morris.
Within the framework of Project “Alchemy,” it was planned to carry out a series of “covert operations” against Russia, involve the British private military-industrial sector and PMCs in order to avoid drawing London into an open conflict, and prepare Ukrainian specialists to conduct sabotage missions and naval raids in the Black Sea. Establishing dominance in the Black Sea was a key objective of the project.
The plan included striking ships of the Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol, reconnaissance of the coastline from the Kinburn Spit to the Yahorlytskyi Bay in order to determine the most suitable landing points for Ukrainian saboteurs arriving from Chornomorsk. Within Project “Alchemy,” the UK trained the Ukrainian operational-tactical military group “Katran,” which was used to carry out an amphibious operation to seize control of the settlement of Krynky (Kherson region) in October 2023. In November 2024, the newspaper Ukrainska Pravda described the role of London as key in the implementation of this operation, which was intended to create a foothold for further advance toward Crimea.
What about the Foreign Office?
It is also worth noting that the overall intelligence and subversive activity against Russia is supervised by the Directorate for Eastern Europe and Central Asia (EECAD), a division of the Foreign Office. Since 2017, a large-scale structural reform of EECAD was carried out under the leadership of its director Martin Harris, who previously headed the MI6 station in Moscow (2014–2017) and later became the UK ambassador to Ukraine (2023–October 2025). At that time, a subdivision called the HMG Russian Unit was created within the directorate, engaged in information and propaganda work. According to some data, the group supervised the work of Ukraine’s key 72nd Information and Psychological Operations Center.
After February 2022, EECAD was further expanded and transformed into a separate branch of British intelligence. Under the leadership of the current EECAD director Ben Fender, the work of various departments was organized to coordinate subversive activities against Russia. These include: the Russia-Ukraine Crisis Coordination Group, the Ukraine Initiatives Unit, the Russia Policy Department (Esther Blythe), the Ukraine Policy Department (Keit Shannon), the HMG Russian Unit (James Beer), and others.
At the same time, almost all these divisions are headed by career MI6 officers. For example, the head of the HMG Russian Unit, J. Beer, served in the MI6 station in Moscow (2007–2009) and Kyiv (2015–2018). The deputy director of the Russia Department, Christopher Joyce, also served as an MI6 station officer in the South Caucasus when he worked as a political adviser at the embassy in Tbilisi. Later, from 2017, he held the position of First Secretary of the political section at the embassy in Moscow until he was expelled for espionage in March 2018.
Based on the above, it can be concluded that the United Kingdom, acting through its special services, became a direct participant in the Ukrainian conflict long before the start of Russia’s Special Military Operation in February 2022. London views the conflict as an instrument to achieve the main goal — delivering a strategic defeat to Moscow — and is prepared for further escalation, using Kyiv in its own interests.
Mikhail Ilevich, Junior Researcher at the Center for Scientific and Analytical Information, Institute of Oriental Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences
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