November 5 2024 - 6:30pm
When sexual aids spontaneously burst into flame, one does not automatically assume it to be the work of Vladimir Putin. However, that is the prospect now being considered by Western security officials, who believe that two electric massagers which ignited in logistics hubs in Germany and the US back in July were in fact part of a wider Russian sabotage operation. The European erotic gadget inferno was, they suspect, a “practice run” aimed at ultimately placing similar incendiary devices aboard cargo or even passenger aircraft flying to the US and Canada.
Although downing a passenger plane would constitute a dramatic escalation for Russian spies, it would not be wholly out of character. While the Kremlin has run cyber and information warfare campaigns for years, there has been a recent upsurge in acts of physical sabotage conducted on the soil of Western nations by Moscow’s locally engaged proxies.
In July, the US foiled a Russian plot to assassinate the chief executive of German arms manufacturer Rheinmetall, apparently as punishment for the firm’s role in providing weapons to Ukraine. More recently, Germany, Sweden and Finland have reported break-ins at water treatment plants, with residents forced to boil drinking water for fear of contamination. Meanwhile, targets for defacement and arson in the Baltic states have included Latvia’s Occupation Museum and — suggesting a saboteur with a very specific grudge — a Lithuanian branch of IKEA.
Western governments have not been shy in calling this out. At a July Nato meeting, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken described sabotage attacks as “a deliberate strategy by Russia to try to undermine our security and undermine the cohesion of the Alliance”. Last month, MI5 Director-General Ken McCallum claimed that Moscow’s military intelligence unit, the GRU, is “on a sustained mission to generate mayhem on British and European streets”, including arson and sabotage “conducted with increasing recklessness”.
The question remains, however, as to why Moscow is intensifying its activities now. The overall goal is likely to degrade Western support for Ukraine by making it costly for their citizens, who are then expected to pressure their leaders to halt vital supplies of weaponry to Kyiv. There is an additional psychological element, as Western populations will feel increasingly vulnerable to the long arm of the Kremlin, thereby reducing trust in their own governments.
Worryingly, this may aim not just to sow discord now but to lay the foundations for actual warfare. Last month Bruno Kahl, the head of Germany’s foreign intelligence service, warned that “direct military confrontation with Nato has become an option for Moscow” and that Russia’s military will likely be more prepared to attack the rest of Europe later this decade. In that context, sabotage now is potentially intended to increase fear of Moscow among Western civilians and divide them from their governments in anticipation of actual conflict.
There are also the GRU’s internal dynamics to consider. The organization suffered operational setbacks when Russian intelligence officers were expelled en masse from Western embassies after the Ukraine invasion. However, spies have now regrouped and are eager to prove their value to the Kremlin after their intelligence failures in February 2022 helped turn a three-day operation into a two-and-a-half-year war. SIS Chief Sir Richard Moore claimed in September that the “Russian intelligence services have gone a bit feral”, and Western intelligence officials suspect that Russian spies may have been overstepping the limits established by the Kremlin with this latest plot.
Yet the ramifications of setting a passenger plane ablaze are such that the GRU is unlikely to have even entered the planning stage without the Kremlin’s full approval. What’s more, flagrant sabotage supports Moscow’s political objectives and gives the Kremlin a valuable tool for manipulating the West. Washington recently backed away from permitting Kyiv to strike military targets inside Russia after American intelligence agencies assessed that Russia could respond with increased acts of arson and sabotage as well as lethal attacks on US and European military bases.
The sum of all this is that the West will struggle to deter Russia. The attribution necessary for sanctioning is difficult, and individual acts of sabotage do not meet the threshold for invoking Nato’s Article 5 mutual defense clause. Telegram accounts promoted by pro-Kremlin social media feeds prove an easy method for Moscow to recruit willing proxies to conduct sabotage abroad, with the West seemingly lacking the capacity or political ruthlessness to conduct similar operations in Russia. All that is left to punish Moscow is to publicly call out such activities which, by raising local awareness of this new cost of supporting Ukraine, does the Kremlin’s work for it. Moscow’s sabotage campaign is likely just getting started.
