Western intelligence services have accused Moscow of increasingly carrying out sabotage, electoral interference and propaganda. The phenomenon is not new, but the methods are becoming more sophisticated.
A cargo plane belonging to the German parcel services company DHL crashes in Lithuania, two submarine data cables are damaged in the Baltic Sea and a pro-Russia right-wing extremist surprisingly wins the second round of elections for president in Romania.
Although nothing has been proven so far, several Western politicians and intelligence services suspect the same driving force behind all these incidents: Russia. Although the dangers posed by the so-called “hybrid war” emanating from the Kremlin are not new, authorities on the subject warn that they have increased dramatically since the start of the war of aggression launched against Ukraine by Russia in 2022.
“Hybrid warfare” is the expansion of military combat operations with the help of espionage, sabotage, cyber attacks, election interference, propaganda or disinformation campaigns with the aim of weakening and destabilizing the enemy internally. And experts warn that Russia has been constantly expanding its arsenal of hybrid warfare options in recent years.
Espionage
Since the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 22, 2022, around 500 Russian diplomats have been expelled from European countries, with at least 400 of them being classified as spies by the British secret service MI5.
It is said that many Russian embassies and consulates are equipped with state-of-the-art communications and espionage technology, which cannot be fully proven, as the buildings are considered Russian territories and enjoy diplomatic protection status.
In addition to the British, the Dutch secret service has warned that Russia is equipping spies with false documents and smuggling them into Western institutions disguised as businessmen.
Reports regularly accuse Russia of espionage. Whether it’s conversations intercepted by the Bundeswehr [German Armed Forces] about the Taurus missile defense system, the suspicions of Russian drones over European air bases and industrial zones or alleged research vessels cruising the seas of northern Europe and suspected of mapping critical infrastructure on the seabed for possible acts of sabotage.
Sabotage
Last week, a Chinese cargo ship driven by a Russian captain allegedly damaged two submarine cables with an anchor dragged on the seabed – the case has parallels with a similar incident in October 2023.
Last month, there was an arson attack on a warehouse in London where aid supplies for Ukraine were stored. In July, a package that was to be sent by air freight caught fire at the DHL logistics center in Leipzig, Germany.
Russian action is suspected in these and several other cases. Nothing has been proven so far, but European intelligence services warn that the number of acts of sabotage and arson in the EU and the UK has risen dramatically in the last year.
Cyber attacks
Germany’s Federal Office for Information Security warns that the threat level in cyberspace is also “higher than ever”, with sabotage and espionage growing online.
“Before the invasion of Ukraine, Russian-associated hacker groups were particularly active in Germany with cyber espionage and financially motivated ransomware attacks. Since the start of the war, the spectrum of threats has increased,” says the department.
According to experts, “the number of DDoS attacks by pro-Russian hacker-activists” has greatly increased. This involves flooding websites or institutional servers with so much malicious traffic that, due to overload, they can no longer be operated. And hacker attacks aimed at breaking into the protected networks of companies or institutions are also on the rise.
Disinformation and propaganda
Another major field of activity in hybrid warfare is the attempt to influence public opinion in target countries. This is done by spreading false information and pro-Russian or anti-Ukrainian narratives through so-called troll factories on social media or through Russian media abroad.
Earlier this year, the German Foreign Ministry uncovered the so-called “look-alike campaign”: 50,000 fake user accounts spread disingenuous reports and pro-Russia opinions on social media and then created links to fake websites, some of which were deceptively similar to those of well-known news media – with pro-Russia fake news also disseminated.
Interference in elections and political processes
One of the main aims of these disinformation campaigns is to undermine support for Ukraine among the population. Another is to undermine political stability in democratic countries by strengthening extremist parties and their candidates, which would be done through financial support.
In April, the Czech secret service discovered a propaganda website allegedly funded by Moscow called “Voice of Europe”, through which bribes were allegedly paid to several European parliamentarians.
German MP Petr Bystron, of the ultra-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, is suspected of having received such payments. He denies the allegations.
Western intelligence services also accuse Russia of directly or indirectly influencing elections in dozens of elections in Europe and North and South America. Russian broadcaster RT, for example, allegedly produced videos on controversial topics such as aid to Ukraine, migration and the economy during the US presidential election campaign. These videos were distributed by American right-wing bloggers.
Hack-and-leak attacks are also part of the repertoire: politicians or parties are hacked, and confidential documents, sometimes mixed with fake documents, are published shortly before the elections. This was the case in the 2016 US elections and the 2017 French presidential election campaign, for example.
Thwarted attacks?
In theory, attacks on enemy leaders also fall under the umbrella of hybrid warfare. The fact that Russian leader Vladimir Putin does not shy away from attacks abroad can be exemplified by the assassination in Berlin’s Tiergarten park of a former Chechen commander who allegedly fought against Moscow in the second Chechen war, which began in 1999 – or by the attacks on Kremlin critic Alexander Litvinenko in the UK in 2006 or on Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in 2018.
So far, Russian citizens have been the main targets of these attacks. In July 2024, however, it became known that Russia had allegedly planned an assassination attempt on Armin Papperger, CEO of the German arms company Rheinmetall – among other things, Rheinmetall supplies Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine. The Kremlin denies all the accusations.
What to do?
Russia is currently carrying out several different actions in Europe, according to Sönke Marahrens, an officer in the German Armed Forces and a specialist in hybrid security, in an interview with the Tagesschau program website.
“Russian operators are testing very different things in many European countries, which are customized according to the respective state. Hybrid measures that work in Poland won’t work in Germany; what works in Germany wouldn’t work in Finland,” he says. As a result, “a very broad spectrum of attacks should also be expected in the future […]”. Countries will therefore need to be highly flexible in order to react to these attacks.