A warning about hybrid threats is also a prompt to examine the systems that keep goods, services and customers moving.
On 28 September, EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said intelligence indicated that Russia was planning further acts of sabotage and attacks against European democracy. EU defence ministers also discussed their response to hybrid threats and the need to protect freedom of navigation through key shipping routes.
These statements do not mean that any particular UK business is a target. They do underline a challenge for leaders: disruption can begin outside an organisation and still reach its operations quickly.
A business may depend on a port it does not own, a supplier’s supplier it has never assessed, a logistics provider’s systems, or a single route for a critical product. An incident affecting one of those links can spread into delayed deliveries, higher costs, lost sales and difficult decisions for frontline teams. Cyber, physical security and supply chain risk need to be considered together.
For retailers, especially those supplying food and essentials, the useful question is not simply, “Are we exposed to sabotage?” It is: Which services and supply routes would we struggle to replace if disrupted?
Leadership teams should be able to identify their critical suppliers and sites, the routes connecting them, and the systems needed to order, move and sell products. They should know where a single point of failure exists, how long the business could operate without it, and who would make decisions if several pressures arrived at once.
That picture rarely sits in one department. Procurement may understand supplier concentration; operations may know the practical limits of alternative routes; IT may see a third-party technology dependency; and finance may understand the cost of interruption. Bringing those views together turns a broad concern into a ranked set of actions.
Resilience does not require a response to every possible scenario. It requires clear priorities and tested choices. For a business with complex supply chains, that could mean:
The result should be a plan that leaders can use: what to address now, what to improve over time, and what to monitor as the threat environment changes.
UDSS brings defence, security and commercial expertise to business resilience. Its work can help organisations identify connected risks, assess gaps in existing controls, improve supply chain visibility, test crisis plans and develop a practical roadmap for action.
For UK supermarkets and food and essentials retailers, UDSS’s Perfect Storm service begins with a confidential executive discussion. Depending on the organisation’s needs, it can progress to targeted analysis, remedial work and ongoing advisory support. The aim is to give decision-makers a clearer view of where disruption could emerge and what they can do about it.
Kallas’s warning is a reason to ask those questions now. A resilient business cannot control every external threat, but it can understand its dependencies, prepare its people and make better decisions when conditions change.
Discuss your organisation’s resilience with UDSS.
Source: Kaja Kallas’s remarks, 28 September 2026 and the EU Council meeting summary.