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Russia wants to confront NATO but dares not fight it on the battlefield – so it’s waging a hybrid war instead

June 30, 2024

When someone tried – and failed – to burn down a bus garage in Prague earlier this month, the unsuccessful arson attack didn’t draw much attention. Until, that is, Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala revealed it was “very likely” that Moscow was behind it.

The accusation prompted alarm among security officials and governments because several similar incidents have occurred across Europe in recent months. The Museum of Occupation in Riga was targeted in an arson attack in February. A London warehouse burnt down in March and a shopping center in Warsaw went up in flames in May. Police in Germany arrested several people suspected of planning explosions and arson attacks in April, and French authorities launched an anti-terror investigation after detaining a suspected bomb-maker who was injured in a botched explosion earlier this month.

Multiple hacking attacks and spying incidents have been reported in different European countries. As the same time, the European Union has accused Russia and Belarus of weaponizing migration by pushing asylum seekers from third countries to its borders. There have also been several suspicious attacks against individuals: a Russian defector was found shot dead in Spain and an opposition figure exiled in Lithuania was brutally attacked with a hammer.The seemingly random attacks have one thing in common: according to local officials, they are all linked to Russia. And while they might look minor in isolation, taken together these incidents amount to what security experts say is Russia’s hybrid war on the West.

“We are threatened by something which is not a full-fledged military attack, which are these hybrid threats … everything from meddling in our political processes, (undermining) the trust in our political institutions, disinformation, cyber-attacks (…) and sabotage actions against critical infrastructure,” NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said during an event in Canada last week.

Rod Thornton, a senior lecturer in defense studies at King’s College London, said there’s been a pattern of attacks linked back to Russia. “There has definitely been an increase over the last few months in these particular types of operations. It is something that the Russians are ramping up,” Thornton said.

Moscow has not claimed responsibility for any of the attacks and has not responded to CNN’s request for comment, but Russian President Vladimir Putin has made it clear he sees the war in Ukraine as part of a broader conflict with NATO and that his regime views the government in Kyiv as a mere proxy of the West. And with every increase of Western aid to Ukraine – whether through new weapons deliveries, or the imposition of new sanctions on Russia – the Kremlin has stepped up its saber-rattling.

Thornton said Russia was resorting to a campaign of sabotage as an alternative to a full-on war with NATO, which would be disastrous for Russia.

“It’s long been a part of Russian military doctrine to try and avoid trying to face NATO on a battlefield, because they know they would lose to NATO forces,” he said. “What they are doing is undertaking activities which are below the threshold of armed conflict, so they are not inciting an Article 5 response from NATO,” he added.

Article 5 is the cornerstone principle that an attack on one member of NATO is an attack on all members. It’s only been invoked once – after the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States by al Qaeda.

Thornton said that by deliberately keeping the attacks below the threshold of armed conflict, Russia is hoping to sow more divisions within NATO because there is no clear blueprint on how to act.

“NATO only works when all member states of NATO act in unison. It’s no good if the US, the UK, maybe France say, let’s do this against Russia, and if the other countries say, well, you know, we don’t want to do that, we need to wait on this.”

Nicole Wolkov, a Russia researcher at the US-based Institute for the Study of War, said Russia’s main goal now is to disrupt the flows of Western military aid to Ukraine.

“These hybrid operations are part of Russia’s war effort to weaken Western resolve to support Ukraine and undermine unity within the West,” she said, warning that in the long term, Russia might be gearing up for a more direct confrontation.

“Russia is, and has been since before the war, conducting these hybrid operations against NATO, the West, the EU, in tandem with its attempts to improve its conventional military abilities for a potential future conflict with NATO,” she told CNN.

Years in the making
Russia-watchers say Moscow has been beefing up its hybrid war units for years. The most obvious sign of this, they say, was the promotion of a notorious spy commander, Andrei Averyanov, into the top ranks of the GRU in 2020.

Averyanov allegedly oversaw the 2018 Novichok nerve agent poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal in Salisbury in England, and the 2014 blast in an ammunition depot in the Czech Republic that killed two people. Now the deputy head of the GRU, he is wanted in the Czech Republic over his role in the blast in the town of Vrbetice. Russia has repeatedly denied its involvement in both events.

“He was previously the head of 29155 unit, which is known for its participation in the Salisbury attack, they attempted to organize that coup d’etat in Montenegro, they had operations to destabilize Moldova and Macedonia,” said Oleksandr Danylyuk, an associate fellow at Royal United Services Institute, a UK defense and security think tank, and a former Ukrainian defense and foreign intelligence official.

“His promotion and the creation of a new Special Activity Division that has new powers to recruit their own assets … it’s a very strong indicator that Russia is trying to expand its capabilities,” he added.

Czech Police said that the suspected arsonist in the recent bus station incident was a 26-year-old foreigner who had only arrived in the Czech Republic five days earlier. Fiala, the prime minister, alleged the man was paid for his actions.

The amateurish nature of the Prague attack – the perpetrator did not manage to cause any significant damage and was caught – fits the pattern.

“At the moment, most of these people are just proxies that are paid by the GRU, they aren’t trained to do these types of operations, they might be seen as a testing mechanism conducted by the Russians to see where the weaknesses of Western critical national infrastructure are,” said Danylyuk.

BERLIN, GERMANY – MARCH 07: Police officers work on their desks in the situation room at the Ministry of Interior during the current GETEX joint exercises between German police and military on March 7, 2017 in Berlin, Germany. GETEX, short for the Joint Terrorism Defense Exercise, is taking place across Germany to simulate the joint operations capabilities between German law enforcement agencies and the Bundeswehr, Germany’s armed forces, in battling larger-scale terror threats. (Photo by Thomas Trutschel/Photothek via Getty Images)

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