Russia is conducting an aggressive covert sabotage campaign in Europe

Determined to increase both its battlefield pressure on Ukraine and its political pressure on Ukraine’s supporters, Russia is escalating its sabotage efforts in Europe.

Last Friday, the United Kingdom announced criminal charges against five men accused of a March arson attack on a Ukrainian businessman’s warehouse in London. The accused ringleader is a 20-year-old Briton, Dylan Earl. In addition to the arson charges, Earl is accused of “assisting a foreign intelligence service.”

Another Briton, 22-year-old Jack Reeves, is accused of accepting payment from a foreign intelligence service, namely from Wagner Group elements (the group formerly led by the late Yevgeny Prigozhin). Earl apparently paid other men to join the arson plot, although it is unclear if those others knew they were working acting on Russia’s behalf.

Similarly, two weeks ago, two German-Russian dual citizens were arrested in Germany on suspicion of acting for Russian intelligence services. German prosecutors allege that one of the men, identified only as “Dieter S.,” had been in contact with a Russian intelligence service. Dieter is said to have told his Russian handler that “he was prepared to carry out explosives and arson attacks, especially on infrastructure used by the military and industrial sites in Germany.” German authorities add that Dieter also “collected information about potential attack targets, including U.S. military facilities.”

These incidents draw us toward two conclusions.

First, the similarity in time and intent between the plots in the U.K. and Germany suggests a new and concerted Russian effort to conduct sabotage attacks on Ukraine-aligned targets in Europe. The repeated use of Russian intelligence cutouts rather than Russian intelligence officers indicates Moscow’s desire to mitigate evidence of its culpability in the event, as here, that its efforts are detected. Still, we know that where Russian President Vladimir Putin and his spymaster, Nikolai Patrushev, view an issue as sufficiently important, they will engage in explosives-centric action inside NATO states. In 2014, Russian GRU military intelligence service officers blew up an arms depot in the Czech Republic that was providing ammunition to Ukraine. Two people were killed in that attack.

Second, these incidents are likely only the tip of the iceberg. We should expect further arrests by Western security services of would-be Russian saboteurs in the coming weeks. The risk of successful attacks is also significant.

After all, the fact that the U.K. attack was successful and that the culprits were detained only “right of boom” is striking. Since the 2018 Skripal incident, Britain’s MI5 domestic intelligence service and Government Communications Headquarters signals intelligence service have prioritized their detection of Russian intelligence efforts on U.K. soil. These efforts have been broadly successful. That this warehouse attack was successful, however, underlines Russia’s retained ability to conduct hostile activity even against nations with highly capable intelligence services.

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Regardless, NATO should not tolerate these Russian antics.

These attacks/plots constitute acts of war. They also stand in stark distinction with NATO’s military support for Ukraine. While NATO states support Ukraine with arms, aid, and other equipment, those states do not directly attack Russian targets on Russian soil. That Russia is targeting NATO interests on NATO soil should thus embolden the Biden administration to drop their opposition to Ukrainian strikes on Russian soil. Biden might also, for example, authorize sufficiently aggressive CIA activity that might actually lead to capturing a Russian radio frequency/microwave weapon.