As Parliament lies dormant in recess, British drones are striking Russia

This article is an opinion piece: comment on events, not an impartial news account.

By the Frontbench team

UK-built drones have hit targets inside Russia and Moscow is threatening "consequences". Westminster's answer may well be that such consequences are a price worth paying, especially given the recent intensified bombing of Ukraine, but with Parliament currently in recess, nobody is around to say so.

Sometime in the early hours of Sunday morning, drones built by two British companies crossed into Russian airspace and hit military and industrial targets deep inside the country. A warehouse belonging to Wildberries, Russia's answer to Amazon, was among them. Wildberries is no stranger to this: around 20 of its logistics centres have been hit since 18 July, as part of the wider Ukrainian campaign, knocking out 27% of the company's warehouse capacity.

Russia's embassy in London said the strikes demonstrate that Britain is "deliberately opting for an escalation of the Ukraine crisis". The Ministry of Defence has since answered with its own choice words: "Britain stands shoulder to shoulder with Ukraine." That much is uncontentious.

Since the start of Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine, military and economic aid has flowed liberally. Whatever else was said of former Prime Minister Keir Starmer, on Ukraine he acted. His commitment of £3 billion a year in military aid for the duration of the war, and his leadership in pushing £2.26 billion through the G7 so that the proceeds of frozen Russian assets contribute to Ukraine's defence, were two of the clearest examples.

Britain is not acting alone in this. Germany has overtaken every other European nation to become Ukraine's largest arms supplier, and the Nordic states give more still as a share of their economies, with Denmark contributing over three times what Britain does relative to GDP. But even Berlin, for all its generosity, has kept its own long-range weapons off Russian soil, preferring to fund Ukrainian-built systems instead. Britain's distinction is that its own hardware is now flying into Russian airspace.

Starmer visited Kyiv in his final week in office to tell Zelensky that Britain's support would outlast him. Four weeks into Andy Burnham's premiership, that promise is holding. Burnham has moved faster on Ukraine than anyone expected. Zelensky was his first foreign visitor, received aboard a British aircraft carrier, and Burnham handed over the intellectual property for Stone Cloak, an electronic warfare system that blinds Russian air defences, so that Ukraine can build it rather than wait for it.

As Burnham moves to strengthen his bond with Zelensky, questions about his legitimacy have not gone away at home. He is the UK's seventh Prime Minister in a decade, and like Truss and Sunak before him, he entered Number 10 mid-term, without facing the country. There is nothing untoward about this. However, UK-built drones striking Russia during parliamentary recess, with no statement, debate or scrutiny, should be contentious.

Decisiveness is becoming Burnham's signature. Yet when the Commons returns on 1 September, the Defence Secretary should make a full statement on the use of British-built drones, so that the remaining questions, of who authorised the weapons and the extent to which they will be used in future, can be answered through the proper process of parliamentary scrutiny.