Despite all the effort Russia has put into developing cyber capabilities, its impact has been marginal. This is not for want of effort. The head of the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre described the Russian cyber campaign to be “probably the most sustained and intensive ... on record”.

In the weeks before the war against Ukraine began, a major effort was made to wipe out Ukrainian government networks, deleting data so that systems were unable to function. On February 24, 2022, according to NATO, Russia “successfully deployed more destructive malware ... than the rest of the world’s cyberpowers combined typically use in a given year”.