A report by Labour MP Graeme Downie and researcher Dominic Reed, published Wednesday, argues that Russian cyberattacks, sabotage, and threats to critical infrastructure are costing the UK between £2 billion and £2.5 billion a year. The report, titled The Putin Tax, describes that figure as a floor and acknowledges its methodology was limited, but stresses that the real problem is the absence of any official alternative.
Downie submitted parliamentary questions to several government departments and found that ministers held no estimates of the economic impact of incidents linked to the Kremlin. The report notes that the costs of flooding and fraud are measured because defenses cost money, yet no equivalent effort exists for hostile-state activity. Its largest single component assumes Russia is responsible for 10% of the £14.7 billion that cybercrime costs British businesses annually, a percentage not based on precise attribution.
The report also cites the August 2025 cyberattack on Jaguar Land Rover, estimated to have cost the economy $2.5 billion, though the government has not formally attributed it to Russia-linked actors, alongside a 2024 arson attack on a London warehouse ordered by Russia's Wagner Group. It recommends that the government publish annual economic assessments of hostile foreign-state activity, that the National Cyber Security Centre include cost estimates in its attribution reports, and that the Ministry of Defence develop a methodology for costing physical hostile activity.
The argument echoes former Defence Intelligence head Gen. Sir Jim Hockenhull, who said Britain has failed to make the public case for security investment because the evidence stays classified. A government spokesperson responded that Russia's hybrid attacks are "egregious and wholly unacceptable," pointing to actions such as expelling Russian intelligence officers, sanctioning the GRU, and disrupting illicit finance networks.