Why would the Russians want to do this?

[boringrobot]

Ok, just reading this article in the Daily Mail (apologies, I know how much some MNers hate that paper). Anyway, I just wondered why the Russians would want to attack the UK, I mean what would be the end goal considering we are not at war with them and I doubt we have much they would want/need?

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5315155/Gavin-Williamson-warns-Russian-attack-UK-energy-supply-real-threat.html

Not attack us as such but undermine any anti Russian alliance/unfriendly to Russia grouping in Europe like, say, EU.
In terms of military strategy, in the unlikely event of conventional conflict reaching Western Europe, we are a nice big aircraft carrier for US.
Their main policy aim in Europe currently is to keep Ukraine out of EU.

Russia has been attacking us since the 80's, not seen anything yet. Their economy is doing well, much better than the UK, huge natural resources (much more than UK had). Look more closer to home as to where the real problems lie. Last time I checked the UK media (very rarely, only for a laugh), the poles were going to shift, wiped out by and asteroid, etc, etc, that hasn't happened yet. Be happy!

I don't think Russia are doing anything much. I think our government is in deep crap with finances, brexit etc and needs someone else to blame when it all goes to shit.

People are talking about war. War about what exactly? Everything was all fine a year ago, what has changed?

Britain pissed off russia on a global stage.

That’s changed.

The UK doesn’t have anything that Russia wants. But the UK’s location is the problem for Russia.

The Russian Northern Fleet has to pass by the UK to get to the Atlantic, secondly any American reinforcements and supplies heading to NATO locations in Europe would be sent to the UK before being distributed.

By taking out the UK Russia would eliminate a NATO transport hub and give it free access to the Atlantic.

poster moonescape

Actually, Russian economy really not been doing well, only just come out of a major recession. The whole Russian economy and it's huge reserves of oil only generate an economic output which is half that of the UK. Life expectancy is 10 years less than that in the UK. They have huge problems with corruption.

Little wonder that Putin likes to distract Russian's from the problems he has caused by creating phantom enemies abroad. The UK chief among them.

This is a good brief explanation:

Russia – an aggrieved former superpower that has been watching its smaller neighbours defect towards Europe. Recognising that acts of external aggression are likely to have the effect of increasing solidarity and strengthening the EU, the Kremlin has instead been working hard to foment nationalist sentiment inside the EU.

from blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexit/2018/07/18/lse-continental-breakfast-10-brexit-and-multilateralism/

This was specifically about the cyberattacks and social media attacks, but it's a good explanation of why Putin sees it in his interest to attack the UK.

data.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/committeeevidence.svc/evidencedocument/digital-culture-media-and-sport-committee/fake-news/oral/79824.html

Bill Browder: Well, you should say, what is the objective? Vladimir Putin’s objective is to stay in power and to keep all his money. How does he stay in power and keep all his money? It’s not easy with a bunch of people in his country who are—I mean, any person, whether you are the best leader or the worst leader, if you have been around for 17 years, people start getting tired of you. And in his particular case, they’re getting tired of him, and the economy is not doing well, and people are getting poorer. So what do you do? You go out and you start wars, you create chaos and you create foreign enemies. This is all sort of “Machiavelli Dictator’s Playbook 101” that Putin is after.

So what is his strategy? His strategy is to have foreign enemies that are not at war with him. He can’t be at war; he’s got to have an asymmetric war. He could not survive a real military conflict. This is a perfect asymmetric war: to pretend you’re not doing it, to send in little green men to Crimea and then say, “No, they weren’t ours”, and to do all this stuff where you spend $1.5 million a month sending out messages from the internet research institute in St Petersburg, and things that are plausibly deniable, which have a huge effect, but do not require huge resources to do. He’s become the expert at asymmetric war.
[...]
This strategy is not going to work for him. In the end, we’re all going to anger to such an extent that we will come up with solutions for all the stuff he’s doing. Democracies are slow to anger, but when we do it’s going to be devastating for him.