Russia is planning sabotage in Europe, the secret services warn | iRADIO

Although Russian agents have carried out such operations in the past and have been responsible for sporadic attacks in Europe in recent years, there is now increasing evidence that their efforts to prepare similar acts have increased in intensity.

Representatives of the secret services are speaking more and more openly about these threats in order to incite vigilance, writes the Financial Times.

“We have assessed that the risk of state-controlled sabotage actions has increased significantly,” said Thomas Haldenwang, head of Germany’s Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, i.e. civilian counterintelligence.

Attacks in Europe

According to him, Russia has no qualms about carrying out attacks in Europe that would potentially cause great damage.

Two German-Russians were arrested in Bavaria last month on suspicion of planning attacks on military and logistical facilities on orders from Russia.

Two men were recently indicted in Britain for setting fire to a warehouse with aid to Ukraine. According to British authorities, they were working for the Russian government.

In Sweden, on the other hand, the security forces are investigating several cases where trains were derailed, and they do not rule out that they could be acts of sabotage.

Czech Transport Minister Martin Kupka told the Financial Times a month ago that Russia had made thousands of attempts to disrupt the European railway network and that Czech Railways had also been the target of hacking attacks.

According to the Estonian Internal Security Service, Russia is responsible for vandalizing the car of the Minister of the Interior and a journalist.

“The clear conclusion is that the Russians have clearly stepped up their activities,” said Keir Giles of the Chatham House Institute. “It’s impossible to say whether it’s because they’re putting more resources into operations, or whether they’re more lax and getting caught, or whether Western counterintelligence has gotten better at detecting and stopping such actions,” he said. “Be that as it may, there’s a lot going on,” he noted.

Cyber ​​activities

The growing concern that Russia is increasingly seeking to wreak havoc in Europe comes alongside a series of accusations against Moscow that it is behind disinformation and hacking campaigns.

In recent days, such an accusation came from Germany and the Czech Republic and related to the cyber activity of the Russian secret services.

An unnamed European intelligence official told the Financial Times that Russia’s goal is to exert as much pressure as possible across Europe, and that Russian President Vladimir Putin will try to do so on multiple fronts through sabotage, disinformation and hacking attacks.

According to the Financial Times, the growing aggression by Russia’s secret services also reflects efforts by their chiefs to recover from their biggest setback since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

In the weeks following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, various countries expelled more than 600 Russian agents operating under diplomatic cover, severely damaging the Kremlin’s spy network on the European continent.

The British Royal Institute of the Armed Forces RUSI recently pointed out that Russia is trying to restore its presence in Europe through its proxies. These are members of the Russian diaspora or organized crime groups with whom the Kremlin has long-term ties.

In addition, Russia made a strategic change and created so-called Special Influence Committees to coordinate the activities of the intelligence services in each of the selected countries. Previously unsystematic activities of individual intelligence services and other actors were concentrated in them.

As Russia ramps up its operations in European countries, European security services have increased their vigilance about possible threats and are trying to detect targets that may have escaped them.

This is how questions arose surrounding the still unexplained explosion at the BAE Systems ammunition factory in Wales, which supplies ammunition to Ukraine.

In 2014, a warehouse in Vrbětice, Czech Republic, where weapons intended for Ukraine were stored, was destroyed; it was later revealed that the explosives had been planted there by Russian agents.

On Friday, a huge fire broke out in the Berlin plant of the Diehl company, which also sends military equipment to Kyiv.

“The aim of these attacks we have seen so far is of course to cause confusion and damage, but they can also be used for disinformation. And then it is also about what Russia can learn from them if it really wants to paralyze Europe. It’s about practice,” says Chatham House’s Giles.

CTK

Share on Facebook

Share on Twitter

Share on LinkedIn

Print

Copy the url address

Abbreviated address





Copy to clipboard

Close