Russia significantly stepped up its sabotage campaign over the past two years as it sought to pressure Europe and the United States to curb their support for Ukraine, according to a new study released on Tuesday.
The report, by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, is one of the first that try to quantify the scale of Moscow’s covert campaign that targeted undersea cables, warehouses and railways. It found that Russian attacks in Europe quadrupled from 2022 to 2023 and then tripled again from 2023 to 2024.
“This is an important tool that the Russians are using in coordination with their conventional war in Ukraine,” said Seth G. Jones, the author of the study and a former adviser to the U.S. military. “It makes very little sense now for Russia to push troops across the border to the Baltic States or Finland. But their payback for these countries that are providing weapons is going after their companies, assassination plots against officials and threatening critical infrastructure.”
Amid the push by Washington to halt the war in Ukraine, Russia has tamped down its sabotage efforts in recent weeks, according to a Western official. But experts believe the campaign against European targets could continue once governments put in place new plans to support Ukraine with weapons or peacekeepers.
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Anger at Russia’s sabotage efforts has the potential to influence European reactions to the U.S.-led push for an end to the war in Ukraine. Prime Minister Donald Tusk of Poland noted in a social media post on Monday that Lithuanian officials had confirmed his assessment that Russia was responsible for a series of fires in shopping centers in Warsaw and Vilnius, the Lithuanian capital. “Good to know before negotiations,” Mr. Tusk wrote. “Such is the nature of this state.”
The message to countries supporting Ukraine has been that Russia can impose costs — and increase them. There is little evidence that the Russian campaign was effective last year. But as the United States apparently retreats from its backing of Ukraine and European allies, the question will be whether a covert Russian campaign can become more successful at pushing countries to reconsider their support.
The report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies found that about 27 percent of Russia’s attacks were against transportation targets, 21 percent against industrial targets and 21 percent against undersea cables, pipelines and other infrastructure. Overall, the study tracked 52 separate acts of sabotage from 2022 to the present.
Russia has tried to control its campaign and not escalate too much. It tried to cap the level of violence to avoid inadvertently driving up support for Ukraine, Mr. Jones said.
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“We don’t see a lot of people dying right now,” he said. “If a train was derailed carrying weapons, that would be one thing. If it were full of people, that would be a whole different thing.”
People who have been killed as part of the covert campaign, such as a former Russian helicopter pilot in Spain, were mainly defectors. While Russia has tried to avoid killing foreigners, Western intelligence officials said last year that it had sought to kill the chief executive of a prominent German arms maker.
American and European officials have been concerned about miscalculation by Russia and its inability to precisely control some of its own operatives.
After Russian intelligence plotted to place incendiary devices on DHL cargo planes last year, the Biden administration warned President Vladimir V. Putin that sabotage that brought down aircraft would elicit a serious response. European leaders and NATO have repeatedly called out the attacks, issued warnings and expelled Russian diplomats and spies over them. But the report found that those efforts “failed to coerce Russia” from stopping its campaign.
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The effort is part of a Russian tradition of covert sabotage, known as active measures, that the K.G.B. honed during the Cold War. Russian military intelligence, known as the G.R.U., has led the current campaign, The New York Times reported in May.
The operation intensified last year, when the Kremlin approved a push after Britain and Germany announced new support for Ukraine, according to the Western intelligence official. The German publication WirtschaftsWoche reported the decision to expand the sabotage campaign, including the use of other Russian intelligence services.
The new study found no recorded attacks in European countries friendly to Russia, such as Serbia and Hungary. On the other hand, Poland, which has been the hub of Western aid flowing to Ukraine, has been repeatedly targeted.
“They are clearly making concrete decisions of whom they go after and whom they don’t go after,” Mr. Jones said of Russia.
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While the cutting of cables by Russia’s shadow fleet of ships trying to evade sanctions has received much of the attention in recent months, Mr. Jones said a majority of attacks were explosive or incendiary devices causing fires at factories, warehouses and other facilities.
He added that there had not been any instances of sabotage around U.S. bases in recent weeks. Last year, as the sabotage campaign stepped up, military officials ordered U.S. bases in Europe to raise their alert level.
“I have not seen a U.S. target in the last couple weeks,” Mr. Jones said, “so they appear to be holding off from U.S. targets right now.”
Julian E. Barnes covers the U.S. intelligence agencies and international security matters for The Times. He has written about security issues for more than two decades. More about Julian E. Barnes
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