Economic losses to the United Kingdom from Russian hostile activity amount to at least £2–2.5 billion a year, according to the report The Putin Tax, published on 7 October 2026 by Labour MP Graeme Downie and researcher Dominic Reed. The authors describe the estimate as a floor and warn that the real figure is likely to be substantially higher.
The calculation covers cyber attacks, sabotage and risks to subsea infrastructure. The authors estimate average annual losses from major incidents since 2022 at about £400–500 million. Those incidents include the 2025 attack on Jaguar Land Rover (the Cyber Monitoring Centre put the hit to the economy at about £1.9 billion; the UK government has not formally attributed it to Russia), the LockBit ransomware attack on Royal Mail in January 2023 (about £10 million in remediation costs) and the 2024 arson attack on industrial units in Leyton, east London, which counter-terrorism police linked to an order from the Wagner group (direct damage of about £1 million).
Separately, the authors attribute about £1.47 billion to Russia-linked cyber attacks. The figure is one-tenth of £14.7 billion, the estimated total annual cost of cyber attacks to British business in research commissioned by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology. The report calls the 10 per cent share conservative and notes that it is not based on precise attribution. A further £250–500 million is an estimate of annual exposure from threats to subsea communications cables, not a recorded loss.
Downie, the MP for Dunfermline and Dollar and vice-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on rearmament, says the government does not add these costs up into a single figure. Parliamentary questions showed that departments hold no estimates of the economic impact of incidents linked to the Kremlin. According to the report, more than 300 cyber incidents attributed to Russia have been recorded since 2022.
