Western countries have shied away from reacting to Kremlin acts of sabotage and terror. Why?
Part 2 of a new series. A link to Part 1 (on the use of criminal gangs by the West’s enemies) can be found at the bottom of this page.
27 November 2024 Berlin, Germany) — Over the last few years I have written about the use of deception and low-intensity, nonconventional battle techniques that have affected the dynamics of war – both cyberwarfare and kinetic warfare. The “infowar” space has been the most prolific. All of these techniques – both kinetic and cyber – offer a much lower risk of casualties to the perpetrator, and provides anonymity, deniability plus a high return on investment.
Politico, The Wall Street Journal and Wired magazine have each run a series on these, and related events: the massive cyber and kinetic war being waged by these countries against the West.
Over the next series of posts I will curate their findings, plus add my own research based on interviews I have had with cyberwar/kinetic war experts, members of the Western intelligence community, plus my visits to intelligence archives in Washington, DC , Berlin, Brussels and Paris.
Now, Part 2.
Europe is under attack from Russia. Why isn’t it fighting back?
If not for a delay in a connecting flight, the incendiary bomb would likely have burst into flames in the belly of a plane flying high above the European Union. Instead, it ignited on the ground in Germany’s Leipzig airport, setting fire to a DHL air freight container. Western intelligence officials believe the attack, which took place this past July, was a trial run by Russian agents who planned to place similar bombs on flights to the United States. In an interview with Politico, Thomas Haldenwang (who recently stepped down as president of Germany’s federal domestic intelligence agency) said:
“We have been observing aggressive actions by the Russian intelligence services for some time now. Russia is using the entire toolbox, from influencing political discussions to cyber attacks on critical infrastructure to sabotage on a significant scale”.
As I have noted in a series of posts over the last several years, the Kremlin has long carried out so-called hybrid warfare against European countries, including disinformation campaigns, hacking, cyberattacks and election interference to destabilize European societies and, in the past few years, pushed them to an extreme to decrease military support for Ukraine.
Last week, Germany said that two undersea telecommunications cables in the Baltic Sea were severed as a result of sabotage. As several Western intelligence agencies noted, this was a hybrid action and out and out sabotage. Days earlier, a Russian spy ship, the Yantar, was escorted out of the Irish Sea by the Irish navy after it entered Irish-controlled waters and patrolled an area containing critical energy and internet pipelines and cables. And now a Chinese freighter (or a ship masquerading as a freighter) is being blocked by the Danish navy so it cannot leave the Baltic Sea. It is also suspect.
Russia’s actions have also escalated into outright violence
Russian tanks may not be rolling into Poland or Estonia, but Moscow’s aggression is getting harder to dismiss. A second parcel bomb similar to the one in Leipzig burst into flames in a warehouse near the British city of Birmingham this past July, and German anti-terror police are investigating links to cases elsewhere in Europe. My Polish intelligence network has informed me there have been at least 6 acts of sabotage in its country (not all reaching the media) with Russian fingerprints all over them.
Nils Andreas Stensønes, the head of Norway’s foreign intelligence service, said at an intelligence briefing last month, that he expected the Kremlin to ramp up efforts to sabotage oil and gas infrastructure. Much of this infrastructure has no protection. At that briefing it was also noted that Western officials suspect Moscow was behind arson attacks not only in Poland, and the United Kingdom (which I reported in Part 1 of this series), but also in the Czech Republic, Germany, Latvia and Lithuania. And German and U.S. officials say they foiled a Russian plot to assassinate Armin Papperger, the chief executive of Rheinmetall, a German arms manufacturer and a major supplier of artillery shells to the Ukrainian army. He is now under 24-hour guard.
While some governments – especially in Nordic and Baltic countries – have tried to raise the alarm, the collective response from the EU and NATO has so far been notably tame. Said Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen at the NATO summit over the summer:
“We are simply too polite. They are attacking us every day now. And it will increase. And yet we will do nothing”.
Part of the reason for Europe’s passivity can be attributed to fears in Western capitals about being drawn into a conflict for which they’re not prepared, said Daniel Byman, an expert in terrorism and unconventional warfare at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think tank. In a briefing note he stated:
“Most countries don’t want to be openly confronting Russia more than they already are. They’re worried about escalation, a back-and-forth cycle that will make things worse. Even the words used to talk about the attacks are reflective of Europe’s timidity. Why do they call it ‘hybrid’? Because basically when you call it hybrid you don’t need to do anything about it. If you call it terrorism, then it implies reaction. And Europe is simply unprepared to take on Russia”.
The limits of NATO
The Kremlin’s brand of hybrid warfare was developed by the Russian General Valery Gerasimov, now the chief of the General Staff of the Russian armed forces. Several years ago I had the opportunity to do an in-depth examination of Gerasimov’s “brand” and I will include a detailed look in this series. But in brief Gerasimov position was that war was never just kinetic, just cyber. It never just means disinformation and propaganda, but the use of a broad arsenal of instruments, from sabotage to the infiltration and financing of parties in the West, to the continual violation of the airspace of NATO states by Russian fighter planes, to the continual physical intrusion into NATO countries. Never stop.
Lithuania has been in the direct firing line. Besides testing reaction times (short, physical intrusions into Lithuania, on a regular basis), Moscow is using disinformation to undermine the planned deployment of a German armed forces brigade, part of a NATO effort to shore up its eastern flank. A lot of fake news is being spread, for example that German soldiers raped women and wanted to occupy Lithuania. Russia simply wants to sabotage the project.
In October, Poland temporarily suspended asylum rights for migrants entering the country from Belarus, with Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk – blaming a spike in arrivals on an effort by Moscow to destabilize Warsaw. Even at their most dangerous, however, Russia’s destabilization campaign seems carefully calibrated not to trigger a collective response from NATO under the Western military alliance’s mutual defense provision, known as Article 5. Instead, the Kremlin appears to be slowly ratcheting up the pressure to see what it can get away with. Russia is testing the limits of Article 5 to stir up uncertainty.
NATO countries have discussed a collective response to Russia’s hybrid war. Even if the attacks don’t qualify as acts of war in the traditional sense, countries could invoke Article 4, which calls for “consultation” when a country’s security is threatened.
But the fact remains: there is little appetite in the alliance for confrontation.
And brutal reality sets in. NATO is a defensive military alliance that thinks in terms of peacetime and wartime. NATO’s “tools” simply aren’t designed for the gray zone in the world of competition and contestation. The big problem with invoking Article 5 in the current situation is that there is no clear definition among allies about what hybrid warfare means.
The other main issue is attribution. It’s usually coming a little bit later. For example, more than three months after France’s railroads were sabotaged ahead of the Paris Olympics, the country’s intelligence services are still investigating whether Moscow is behind the attack. Another obstacle is the membership in NATO of countries like Hungary and Turkey, countries that have shown sympathy to Russia, making it more difficult for the consensus-based military alliance to make meaningful decisions against Moscow.
Nonetheless, European governments are showing an increasing willingness to attribute acts of sabotage to Russia, for whatever it’s worth. When something happens, many countries are just going public. They demonstrate that these guys were hired from Russian services, and these guys conducted these attacks getting the money from Russia.
And while shying from direct confrontation, EU and NATO countries are gradually ramping efforts to counter Russia’s hybrid war. In 2021, in response to a Russian effort to undermine the 2017 French presidential election, Paris set up a government agency called Viginum to counter foreign digital interference. Since then, the French government has accused Russia of being behind an online campaign to create panic about the proliferation of bed bugs in Paris and linking the outbreak to the arrival of Ukrainian refugees. French intelligence services also suspect Moscow of having tasked Bulgarian and Moldovan nationals to draw antisemitic graffiti in the streets of Paris, to stoke domestic tensions over the war between Israel and Hamas.
In Sweden, the government has set up a special “agency for psychological defense” to identify and counter disinformation.
Protecting critical infrastructure has also become a new priority for NATO and the EU. In February 2023, after the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines, NATO created a new Undersea Infrastructure Coordination Cell to assess vulnerabilities and coordinate efforts between NATO governments and the private sector. A new EU-NATO Task Force on Resilience of Critical Infrastructure was also created in March 2023. Last month, the defense ministers of Germany and Norway, Boris Pistorius and Bjørn Arild Gram, said on the sidelines of NATO defense ministers meeting that they want allies to create five regional centers to monitor and protect subsea infrastructure like telecom lines, gas pipelines and electricity interconnectors.
Disposable agents
So far, however, the EU and NATO have had little success in deterring Russia. Sanctions directly linked to the war in Ukraine have had a limited impact so far, so it’s unclear whether the new regime will be effective. The Europeans need to respond in a much more united, forceful way. Military aid to Ukraine will need to be stepped up to show that Russian efforts are having the inverted effect.
In addition to boosting defense spending, countries need to ramp up internal security, including police, domestic intelligence services and information sharing between allied governments, said Kohv, of the International Centre for Defence and Security. If Europe misses this opportunity, Russia will only gain more traction. You need to remember that they’re basically mimicking the Soviet Union Cold War sabotage doctrine.
One of Europe’s most forceful responses has, perversely, made it more difficult to trace the crimes back to the perpetrators. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, European governments have expelled more than 700 Russian spies posing as diplomats.In response, the Kremlin has turned to recruiting so-called disposable agents, sometimes via Telegram channels. They are mostly Russian-speaking, IT-savvy young men between 20 and 30, often with a criminal background. Some are ideologically motivated, others do it for money, paid in cryptocurrencies. [See Part 1 for a more detailed look].
For instance, intelligence officials said that the parcel that caught fire in Leipzig was clearly planted by a disposable agent who may not have even known he was planting an incendiary bomb. In April in the U.K., a British man was charged with conducting hostile activities for the benefit of Moscow.
And it will get far worse. Russia has been jamming GPS signals over the Baltic Sea for over a year. Europe has done nothing about it. This week’s crash in Vilnius has investigators scrambling. Is this a crash due to a missing GPS signal? Or did Russia bring packages with incendiary devices onto the plane? It was a DHL plane – again.
What is clear is that Russia can choose how it causes chaos in Europe – because Europe is not fighting back. Europe really needs to wake up to the threat and make Russia pay a price. But it is asleep. Aggressive behavior must have political costs.
Coming in Part 3:
The massive information wars being conducted against Europe and the United States. Weaponizing AI-generated content certainly helps.
In Part 1 ….
The West’s enemies have a new favorite cyber/kinetic war weapon: criminal gangs. Dealing with crime was once the domain of law enforcement, while threats from foreign countries were the responsibility of intelligence agencies. Today the lines are blurred. For my full story please click here.