Europe is ‘unprepared’ for Russia’s hybrid warfare, officials warn

Europe is ‘totally unprepared’ for Russia’s tactics of hybrid warfare, defense officials have warned amid mounting fear that Moscow is already sabotaging critical infrastructure on the continent in anticipation of a wider conflict. Western leaders have accused Russia of sabotaging vital cables in the Baltic twice within 48 hours, after Biden relaxed rules on Ukraine firing long-range missiles into Russia and amid speculation Europe may follow suit. But with both sides so far stopping short of engaging in direct conflict, defense sources have warned that the West is improperly prepared to thwart Moscow’s efforts to destabilize by meddling in European affairs. A former senior European official told the Guardian that the EU is ‘totally unprepared’ to confront Moscow in its campaign of ‘hybrid’ warfare, lacking the resources to effectively counter sabotage, arson, assassination and attacks on infrastructure. They said Europe could expect more ‘hybrid’ attacks to unfold on the continent in the wake of the American decision to permit usage of long-range ATACMS missiles against targets deep inside Russia.

Russia has been accused of trying to destabilize the West and allies since the war in Ukraine began by allegedly ‘weaponizing mass migration’ along its western border, sabotaging Nord Stream pipelines providing Europe with gas, influencing elections in Moldova and Georgia, jamming aircraft GPS, and even sending exploding toys to Western Europe. Recent disruption to trade and energy, and foiled attacks on businesses supplying aid to Ukraine, have sparked fears that Europe remains woefully underequipped to combat Russia’s unconventional strategies. Most recently, the cutting of crucial underseas telecommunications cables in the Baltic Sea this week generated outrage and stark warnings about Russia’s ability to allegedly interfere in European affairs. A 135-mile internet link between Lithuania and Sweden’s Gotland Island went out of service early on Sunday, according to a local supplier, before a 745-mile cable running from Helsinki to Rostock, Germany went offline early Monday morning.

Finland and Germany said in a joint statement that they were investigating ‘an incident (that) immediately raises suspicions of intentional damage’ before European ministers put together a joint statement blaming Russia on Tuesday. UK and EU ministers said Russia’s hybrid attacks were ‘escalating’ and ‘unprecedented’ in scale, posing security risks. ‘We know that Russia has the capability and willingness to do sabotage in Europe,’ Finnish Defense Minister Antti Häkkänen said, urging better protections for critical infrastructure. ‘This is closer to terrorism, with the aim of intimidating the population and influencing decision-making, and affecting support for Ukraine, a senior European security official told the Guardian. Matthew Miller, spokesperson for the US State Department, said separately that Russia would be ‘held accountable’ for any further actions while condemning a wider trend of what he called ‘hybrid warfare conducted by Russia both in Europe and around the world’. Only last week a Russian spy ship had to be escorted out of Irish waters when it sailed close to underwater cables.

The Yantar vessel was found between Dublin and the Isle of Man on Friday, and has reportedly followed sub-sea cable routes over the years. Britain has shadowed Russian naval vessels and reconnaissance planes around its own coastal waters and airspace for more than a year, believed to be straying nearby to test NATO reaction time, tactics, weapons and patterns by tempting interceptions. British fighter jets pushed back Russian bombers in international airspace near Scotland in April last year. The planes are filled with communication and reconnaissance equipment to help pick out submarines. Vlad Şutea, Founder and Lead Analyst at T-Intelligence, told MailOnline ‘the Russian[s] are deliberately testing the RAF and NATO’s overall QRA reaction (time and tactics) while also monitoring maritime movements.’ Russian ships in the North and Baltic Seas have caused increasing concern for NATO countries in the region, too. Belgium launched an investigation in early 2023 after a Russian spy ship off its North Sea coast was suspected of surveying key energy and communications links.

In July 2024, Finland said a Russian research vessel violated its territorial waters, shortly after it joined the NATO military alliance. Russian vessels were systematically surveying critical infrastructure, including wind farms, pipelines, and cables in the North and Baltic Seas, according to a report by German broadcasters NDR, WDR and newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung. ‘We consider the danger to be very real,’ German intelligence chief Bruno Kahl told media. Moscow was ‘accelerating its own preparations to be able to act militarily against the West’, Kahl said. German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said in October that Moscow was using ‘hybrid means’ to target Germany, adding: ‘We see many, many examples, time and again.’ She cited drone activity around the new gas terminals, suggesting they were ‘not there to observe the beautiful local landscape, but because there is a chemical park there and a… storage facility for nuclear waste nearby,’ According to German media reports, the reconnaissance was carried out by unmanned Russian military aircraft. Officials warned the scouting could be ‘for the purposes of sabotage’.

Since the start of the war in Ukraine, the Kremlin has been accused of trying to undermine European interests over their backing of Kyiv and sharp sanctions on Moscow. When leaks were reported at the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines connecting Russia with continental Europe in September 2022, fingers quickly pointed east. Western leaders said the leaks were caused by ‘deliberate’ sabotage to force energy prices up. Russia blamed the CIA and a Ukrainian military officer told the Wall Street Journal that six soldiers had carried out the attack after ‘ a night of heavy boozing.’ More recent media reports have linked the incident to Ukraine – an accusation Kyiv has strenuously denied. Attacks on communication and energy lines are just the top of alleged Russian operations to weaken the West and its allies through subterfuge. Earlier this month Russian spies were accused of trying to derail Moldova’s close election with a failed ‘bomb threat’ plot at British polling stations for expats.

Pro-EU leader Maia Sandu ultimately triumphed in the presidential election to secure a second term with 55 percent of the vote, but had an uphill battle as the national security advisor warned there had been ‘massive interference’ in the electoral process with ‘high potential to distort the outcome’. Colonel Phillip Ingram – a former officer in British military intelligence – said it was ‘highly likely’ Russia was behind the false bomb threats with Moscow aware that ‘every vote counts’ in the tight presidential election. Colonel Ingram said that Russia’s motive for interfering in other countries’ affairs was to inflict ‘death by a thousand cuts.’ He said: ‘No one incident of meddling is catastrophic but if they keep attacking both directly and through interference they will force countries to spend more and more money to prevent it.’ Georgia was less fortunate, as a pro-Putin billionaire oligarch claimed victory after facing accusations of vote-rigging, intimidation, vote buying and ballot stuffing. Russia-aligned Georgian Dream’s founder Bidzina Ivanishvili cast the election as a watershed moment that would decide if Georgia would move closer to the West or back towards Russia amid the war in Ukraine.

Early official results with 70 percent of precincts counted, showed the ruling party had won 53 percent of the vote, the electoral commission said, but the deeply divided pro-Western opposition parties claim that they had collectively clinched a majority. Demonstrators continue to take to the streets of Tbilisi to contest the ‘stolen’ election as the EU and US have backed opposition calls for an investigation. Europe has also accused Russia of ‘weaponizing’ mass migration to force desperate responses and destabilize borders. Frontex, an agency of the EU tasked with managing borders, said it would deploy troops to the Finnish border last November amid reports hundreds of asylum seekers were entering the country without a visa through its shared border with Russia. The Finnish government accused Russia of funneling migrants to various crossings as payback for its decision to increase defense cooperation with the US, an assertion dismissed by Moscow. Finland also became a NATO member in April 2023. This June, a Polish border guard was killed with a spear by migrants trying to cross the border. Officials blamed the surge in arrivals through Belarus as a deliberate Russian tactic against the West.

Finland’s Foreign Minister Elina Valtonen said that Russia is ‘actively helping’ migrants travel to the border. According to Polish officials, about 90% of the migrants at Poland’s border have Russian visas. Western intelligence has uncovered a series of plots believed to be deliberate Russian efforts to undermine European allies of Ukraine. Only this month Russian spies were accused of sending a package full of erotic gadgets to DHL depots in Britain and Germany in an alleged ‘test-run’ for a larger attack on a US-bound flight. Two incendiary devices had been shipped via a DHL logistics center on July 22 from Lithuania to Birmingham, England, and Leipzig, Germany, resulting in a fire. It was later revealed the explosives were hidden in a box containing toys and massage pillows. Four people in Poland have been arrested in connection to the July blaze and charged with participating in sabotage or terrorist operations on behalf of a foreign intelligence agency. Two other individuals are also wanted by investigators in the country. Poland’s prosecutor’s office said: ‘The group’s goal was also to test the transfer channel for such parcels, which were ultimately to be sent to the United States of America and Canada.’ Head of Poland’s foreign intelligence agency, Pawel Szota, also blamed Russia, although the prosecutor’s office statement did not name a foreign government suspected of directing the operations.

Counter-terrorism police in the UK also launched an investigation into whether Russian spies planted an incendiary device on a plane that later caught fire at a DHL warehouse in Birmingham, the Guardian revealed. Ken McCallum, head of MI5, said that Russian intelligence appeared to be working on ‘a sustained mission to generate mayhem on British and European streets: we’ve seen arson, sabotage and more’. Separately, in late October a man admitted to carrying out an arson attack on a Ukrainian-owned business in London on behalf of the Kremlin. Dylan Earl, 20, pleaded guilty to breaching the National Security Act and aggravated arson over a major fire at a warehouse in Leyton in March. Earl pleaded not guilty to assisting a foreign intelligence service. The prosecution said it would not pursue the charge. He did admit, under the second charge, to working on behalf of a foreign power – Russia. British police and officials, as well as their European counterparts in Germany, Poland and Lithuania, also strongly suspect that Russia was behind the attacks as part of an effort to cause ‘mayhem’ in the West in retaliation for Western military support to Ukraine.

In September, security sources warned that Russia was debating whether to send Yakhont missiles to Yemen’s Houthi rebels , jeopardizing international trade and British warships in the Red Sea. ‘Russia could easily suffer losses from indiscriminate Houthi actions in the Red Sea. But it’s happy to run that risk for what it sees as bigger gains from stoking conflict,’ said Edmund Fitton-Brown, Senior Advisor to the Counter Extremism Project and former Ambassador of the UK to Yemen. Fabian Hinz, an expert on ballistic missiles with the International Institute for Strategic Studies, suggested the Houthis could direct Russian missiles towards British and US warships that have been protecting commercial vessels in the Red Sea, dividing Saudi Arabia and Egypt. In August, Russia was accused of flying multiple drones over Germany to collect sensitive information on a nuclear power plant. Germany, notably, decommissioned the last of its nuclear power plants in 2023 after years of fierce debate. Intelligence officers blamed Russia, telling Bild drones were scouting over Brunsbütte as a potential target for sabotage. In July, US intelligence uncovered a plot they believe shows Russian intent to sponsor a series of assassinations of defence industry executives across Europe, including Rheinmetall CEO Armin Papperger, a staunch supporter of Ukraine.

A top German official confirmed that Berlin was warned about the plot by the US, and western officials said the Papperger plot was the most far along. Rheinmetall is the top German manufacturer of 155mm artillery shells used by Ukraine to deter the Russian advance. The company was on the brink of opening a new plant within Ukraine tasked with producing armored vehicles as news of the foiled plot broke. Annalena Baerbock said Russia was waging a hybrid war of aggression, including cyberattacks and sabotage of infrastructure. ‘This underlines once again that we as Europeans must protect ourselves as best we can and not be naïve,’ she said. ‘Russia’s intensifying campaign of subversion is something that we are taking extremely seriously and have been intently focused on over the past few months,’ National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson told CNN at the time. ‘The United States has been discussing this issue with our NATO Allies, and we are actively working together to expose and disrupt these activities,’ she said, reiterating support for Ukraine in the face of destabilization efforts. In May, intelligence chiefs warned ministers that Britain and other Ukrainian allies were being targeted by Russian saboteurs. They identified links between fires at arms factories supplying Ukraine and attacks on computer systems, trail derailments and the jamming of satellite systems for civil air flights.

A senior British security source said Western intelligence agencies feared ‘the [expletive]’ were trying to set Europe alight. ‘Lots of fires that we thought were accidents and unconnected have turned out to be connected,’ he said, suggesting the Kremlin was hiring gangsters and far-right extremists to do its bidding abroad. Tory MP Bob Seely, a Russian-speaking specialist on disinformation and member of the foreign affairs committee, said that Britain must wake up to the threat. ‘We need to understand that the Russian state believes it is in conflict with the UK and other leading Western nations,’ he added. ‘We have to defend ourselves. We don’t know the true scale of these operations. Some look amateurish – but they will get more sophisticated.’ In April, Estonia and other Baltic states warned that widespread GPS jamming allegedly instigated by Russia increased the threat of an aviation accident. The disturbance to location services was blamed on Russian ‘hybrid activity’ in the region, Estonia said. The disruption led Finnish carrier Finnair to suspend flights to the Estonian city of Tartu, near the Russian border.

The airline’s pilots had noticed an increase in interference since 2022, including the airspace close to Russia’s Kaliningrad region on the Baltic Sea. Russia is also alleged to have tried to assassinate Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky in May. Counterintelligence officers were detained over ‘plans of the FSB to eliminate the president of Ukraine’ and other top officials. The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) claimed on Telegram two colonels were implicated in the plot, allegedly ‘leaking’ information back to Russia. SBU investigators allegedly uncovered a drawn out plot to closely follow watched persons before targeting a safehouse with a ‘rocket attack’. ‘Then they were going to attack the people who remained in the affected area with a drone,’ the SBU claimed, without providing evidence. ‘After that, the Russians planned to target with another missile, including to destroy traces of the use of the drone.’

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