Source: The Conversation – UK
When Alexander Litvinenko was murdered in London in 2006, poisoned with radioactive polonium-210 slipped into a pot of tea, the UK was shocked. Litvinenko, a former Russian intelligence officer who had become a critic of Vladimir Putin’s government, died after a highly publicised illness.
A later public inquiry concluded that his killing was probably approved at the highest levels of the Russian state. Yet the Litvinenko attack did not trigger a fundamental rethink of how the UK protects itself from hostile states.
More than a decade later, the attempted assassination of former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury produced something very different. They were poisoned with novichok, a military-grade nerve agent developed by the Soviet Union. Both survived, but the discarded container later killed a local woman, Dawn Sturgess, and left another person seriously ill.
Both attacks prompted diplomatic retaliation, but on very different scales. Litvinenko’s murder led the UK to expel four Russian diplomats. Salisbury triggered the largest coordinated expulsion of Russian officials in history, followed at home by the most far-reaching overhaul of UK national security law in a century.
Why did the second poisoning produce a transformation that the first did not? Our new research traced the UK’s response to Russian hostile activity over two decades. The answer, we argue, is that the two attacks are best understood not as separate cases but as chapters in a single, cumulative story.
We found that dramatic events rarely reform institutions on their own. Change came only when a shock arrived after years of accumulated pressure, and when expert advocates and a shifting public mood made inaction untenable. Litvinenko’s murder was an early contribution to that pressure. Salisbury was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
Litvinenko’s murder was a brazen act on British territory. UK investigators identified a Russian suspect, Andrei Lugovoi, but Moscow refused to extradite him.
The government’s response was real but limited. Beyond the expulsion of the four diplomats, there was no new legislation, organisational overhaul or strategic reprioritisation.
At the time, the UK’s security machinery was focused overwhelmingly on terrorism. After 9/11 and the 2005 London bombings, hostile state activity had become a secondary concern.
Russia had been quietly written off as a strategic threat after the cold war. Add the attraction of Russian wealth flowing into London’s financial and property markets, and the incentives pointed towards continuity. The shock was real, but the pressure to change remained weak.
Pressure builds
Over the next decade, relations with Russia eventually deteriorated. Russia invaded Georgia in 2008, annexed Crimea in 2014, intervened in Syria and backed separatists in eastern Ukraine.
Around the 2016 Brexit referendum, Russian influence operations sought less to push a particular outcome than to widen existing divisions, “flooding the zone” with a mix of true, misleading and false material through news outlets such as Russia Today and Sputnik.
But none of this crossed the threshold needed for reform. The one notable structural development of these years was the creation of the National Security Council in 2010. It quietly laid foundations that later reforms would build on.
Why Salisbury tipped the balance
The Skripal poisoning broke the pattern. But our central argument is that it did so not simply because it was dramatic. Litvinenko’s murder had been dramatic too.
What mattered was timing. Salisbury came after years of mounting pressure that had weakened the case for doing nothing. Each episode of Russian hostility, from the polonium poisoining onwards, added momentum. By 2018, the accumulated weight meant that one more shock could tip the system into change.
First, years of low-level pressure had worn away the case for inaction. Second, expert voices seized the moment. The Intelligence and Security Committee’s 2020 Russia report argued that the UK’s legal framework was no longer fit for purpose. MI5 director general Ken McCallum warned in 2021 that modern interference required modern powers.
Third, public opinion shifted sharply, with a 2018 survey finding that roughly two-thirds of Britons viewed Russia unfavourably. No single factor explains the reforms that followed. It was the convergence of accumulated pressure, expert advocacy and public concern that finally made the status quo untenable.
Once that threshold was crossed, change came quickly. The Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Act 2019 expanded powers to stop and question those suspected of hostile state activity. Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 accelerated matters. The Economic Crime Act and Elections Act, both passed in 2022, targeted illicit wealth and tightened rules around foreign campaign funding.
The centrepiece was the National Security Act 2023, the biggest overhaul of UK national security law in a century. It replaced Official Secrets legislation dating back to 1911. It introduced a Foreign Influence Registration Scheme, with Russia placed on its enhanced tier alongside Iran. The Online Safety Act 2023, meanwhile, gave the regulator Ofcom powers to push platforms to tackle state-sponsored disinformation.
Our findings carry a sobering message. Hybrid threats rarely produce a single unmistakable moment demanding action. Disinformation, cyber intrusions and political interference work more like a slow-moving illness: diffuse, ambiguous and easy to ignore until they become a crisis.
Institutional change often arrives in sudden bursts after long periods of delay. The challenge for democratic governments is learning how to respond before the next crisis forces their hand.
The UK’s experience is unlikely to be unique. Similar lags can be seen in Germany’s slow weaning off Russian energy and France’s gradual strengthening of its cyber defences. The real challenge is to learn how to change before the next poisoning rather than after it.
Ethem Ilbiz received funding from the European Union’s Erasmus+ Programme, under a Jean Monnet Module award, and from the Welsh Government’s Taith Knowledge Exchange Programme. Both supported the Hybrid Warfare and Cybersecurity (HYBER) project, from which this research draws.
Atakan Yılmaz and Mike Edwards do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/07/13/from-alexander-litvinenko-to-sergei-skripal-the-long-road-to-reforming-uk-security/