Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to counter Russian information operations (1) on the battlefield, and (2) in the air.

As the Prime Minister made clear in her speech at the Lord Mayor's Banquet last year, the UK will do what is necessary to protect ourselves, and work with our allies to do likewise. The UK has deployed a battlegroup to Estonia as a framework nation for NATO's enhanced forward presence, and has made regular deployments of Typhoon fighter aircraft conducting NATO air policing. This contribution to Alliance missions demonstrates our commitment to the principle of collective defence and is a measured response to the security challenge posed by Russia.

We know that the Kremlin persistently uses disinformation as a tool to destabilise perceived enemies. This is not new and was evident in Russia's illegal annexation of Crimea, its rhetoric around Syrian regime backed chemical weapons attacks on innocent civilians, and remains so with Russia's destabilisation of east Ukraine and beyond. The best defence against disinformation is a free, wide and varied media landscape. To this end, the UK Government is spending approximately £100 million over five years including in Eastern Europe, for the purpose of countering Russian disinformation.