UK will be Russia's next target if we fail to understand threat, warns warfare expert
Elizabeth Bullock empties a plastic bag of brightly coloured military patches onto the floor, memorabilia from the three years she spent in frontline areas of Ukraine.
They include images of tractors towing captured Russian tanks and bloody depictions of the Kremlin mocked up as a sinking battleship.
After the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Elizabeth left her life behind in London and drove in on her own.
"In the early days it was just fear, so much fear I remember crossing the border for the first time and you felt the air change, Kyiv was like a ghost city, just soldiers, a few civilians," she said.
As well as the patches, she shows me her collection of shrapnel including a piece of the missile which landed on the building she and her team were staying in in Mykolaiv
"If we'd been asleep at the other end of the building we'd have been dead," Elizabeth reflected.
A Russian warfare expert, she has set up her own consulting company Prammavox and is providing valuable insight and briefings to military units and institutions around the country.
Beyond the battlefield, one of her main takeaways is Moscow's use of hybrid and sabotage tactics.
"Everything that Russia can use as a tool to try and break Ukrainian people, they will use, whether it's power, whether it's water, communications," she said.
It is her belief that the Kremlin is ready to use the same tactics against the West.
"With regards to the UK and Europe and the West. It's exactly the same. It's no different ... It’s our power, it's our communications, it's our water, it's our supply chains.
They know this far better than we do ... We all know, of course, about the Russian trawlers mapping undersea cables. They've also been mapping our drinking water systems”
Elizabeth says the UK is a key target.
"We are framed as the greatest external threat. What I learned from watching Russia Today, their main propaganda channel, the amount they talk about us, I was very surprised.
"After Ukraine, I would say it's mostly the UK."
She warns that we are in danger if we do not take this threat seriously enough.
"They only recognise strength. They will test openings. They will test to see what we will respond to," she said.
"If we have a sufficient deterrent, they will not attack. If we do not, they will."
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