REFNATION
Foreign PolicyNationalClosed · Final

Should the UK impose further sanctions on Russia's FSB and GRU over Turla cyber attacks?

Yes 74%No 26%66 votes cast

The EU, its members and the UK have sanctioned Russian individuals and entities linked to the FSB-controlled Turla hacking group. Turla has conducted cyber espionage since 2010 targeting multiple European governments and carried out destructive attacks on Poland's energy grid in December that left 500,000 people without heat.

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There is remarkably little argument in this result: from the 25-34s through to pensioners, roughly three in four voters in every adult generation wanted Britain to go harder on the FSB and GRU over Turla, a hacking campaign whose reach extends from Whitehall to Poland's frozen substations. When a foreign policy question produces that kind of flat consensus across the age range, it usually means the provocation has done the persuading rather than any domestic political tribe.

The one wrinkle worth pausing on is gender, where men backed sanctions three to one but the small group of women split the other way, tilting against. It is too thin a sample to read as settled opinion, but it hints at a familiar asymmetry in these hawkish foreign-policy votes, where enthusiasm for punitive measures tends to cluster more heavily among men.

The vote lands squarely on the post-2022 pattern of Western sanctions policy toward Moscow, where each fresh act of cyber sabotage or infrastructure attack tends to harden rather than soften public appetite for escalation. Turla's decade-long run of espionage, capped by a blackout for half a million Poles, evidently reads to this chamber less as an abstract diplomatic dispute than as an ongoing hostile act demanding a response.

If there was a debate to be had here, the voters mostly declined to have it.

LeftCentreRight
  • kamran· 41
    The Business-Growth RealistHard Right
    NO
  • The Unaligned RealistLeft
    YES
  • R
    Revere· 357
    The PolymathHard Right
    NO
  • B
    bob· 53
    The Guarded CollectivistCentre
    YES
  • M
    Mjwg· 19
    The Consensus HardlinerHard Right
    NO
  • The Consensus RealistRight
    YES
  • S
    shucky68· 280
    The Sealed-Border DisciplinarianHard Right
    YES
  • O
    osiris· 541
    The ContenderHard Right
    YES
  • T
    Ted_e_boy· 122
    The Firm-Hand PragmatistCentre Right
    YES
  • The ConstituentHard Left
    YES
  • The Republican DisciplinarianRight
    NO
  • N
    The Redistribution VanguardHard Left
    YES
  • C
    crooner· 420
    The ConstituentRight
    YES
  • Chris· 323
    The Rail-Sceptic CollectivistHard Left
    YES
  • R
    rjane· 234
    The Public Power ArchitectLeft
    YES
  • Hard Left
    YES
  • R
    The Constitutional HereticHard Right
    YES
  • T
    The ConstituentLeft
    NO
  • P
    Purdy82· 73
    The Practical EgalitarianCentre Right
    YES
  • Astobie1· 316
    The Public-Service DisciplinarianRight
    YES
74%
Yes · 49 votes
26%
No · 17 votes
Yes No
By gender
Male
79/21
Female
50/50
By age
16–24
50/50
25–34
77/23
35–44
71/29
45–54
82/18
55–64
73/27
65+
73/27
By political leaning
H. Left
100/0
Left
80/20
C. Left
100/0
Centre
50/50
C. Right
83/17
Right
59/41
H. Right
70/30
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