A new report from RUSI, cheekily titled *"The Putin Tax and the Cost of Russian Hostility to Britain,"* published Oct 7, calculates Russia is costing the UK up to *£2.5 billion a year* without firing a single shot.
And the author says that's just the floor. The real figure is likely far higher because Britain has no proper system for tracking it.
*Where the money goes:*
*1. Cyberattacks - £1.5 billion*
The biggest chunk is hacking. The report adds up major Russia-linked attacks on British business:
- *Jaguar Land Rover (JLR):* The August 2025 attack forced a 6-week shutdown of three factories making 1,000 cars a day. The Cyber Monitoring Centre rated it a Category 3 systemic event, the most damaging ever in the UK. Cost to the wider economy: £1.9bn / $2.5bn, affecting 5,000 suppliers. Government had to provide a £1.5bn loan guarantee. The New York Times and Microsoft investigators later linked it to a Russian group using never-seen-before ransomware.
- *Royal Mail, Marks & Spencer, NHS supply chains:* Previous Russia-linked ransomware groups LockBit, Scattered Spider / Lapsus$ Hunters have repeatedly hit UK retail and logistics.
- The report notes hacking alone accounts for nearly £1.5bn in recovery, lost output and government support.
*2. Physical sabotage and undersea infrastructure*
The RUSI paper catalogues damage to undersea cables, attempted arson and sabotage of defence-linked warehouses and Ukrainian supply routes in Europe - part of what MI5 calls Russia's "shadow war." Cleaning up, rerouting internet traffic, naval patrols and increased insurance adds hundreds of millions.
*3. The invisible cost*
The Labour MP behind the push for the report told FT that Whitehall counts these incidents in silos - DCMS counts cyber, MoD counts seabed, Home Office counts sabotage - so no one sees the total bill. There is no central ledger for state-threat costs.
That is the point of the "Putin Tax" framing: just as taxpayers feel domestic tax rises, they are also paying a second, involuntary tax through higher prices, delayed deliveries, bailouts and security spending caused by Russian operations.
RUSI argues Britain needs a formal tracking mechanism and a resilience fund funded by seized Russian assets, or the £2.5bn figure will keep rising as Russia leans harder on cheap, deniable hybrid attacks instead of conventional war.
As the report puts it: as if Council Tax, energy bills and National Insurance weren't enough, now Moscow is taking a cut too.