Russia has been waging a campaign of sabotage across Europe for years, with 145 instances of ‘disruption’ recorded.
An investigation has documented details of Vladimir Putin’s ‘hybrid war’, which has been increasing in frequency and severity.
From explosives placed on railway tracks to exploding DHL parcels and warehouse fires, chaos has been unleashed by the Kremlin, which still denies any involvement.
A senior European intelligence official told AP: ‘It’s a 24/7 operation between all of the services to stop it.’
The investigation comes after the brand new head of MI6 warned that the front line with Russia is ‘all over the place’.
Data shows that instances of sabotage linked to Russia have only increased for the reason that invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Arson attacks in London and Estonia
In January, a supermarket and Ukrainian restaurant in Estonia were targeted in arson attacks by a Moldovan man.
Authorities say the person in query had never visited the country prior to the crimes – something which raised alarm bells.
In London, a gang that set fire to a London warehouse, which was providing aid to Ukraine, was found to be linked to Russia’s mercenary Wagner Group.
The lads put the lives of 60 firefighters in danger and caused an estimated £1 million value of harm with the arson on industrial units in Leyton last March.
The warehouse was targeted by the terrorist group – previously headed by the late rebel commander Yevgeny Prigozhin – since it was getting used to produce humanitarian aid and StarLink satellite equipment to Ukraine.
A shopping centre in Warsaw was also the topic of an arson attack in May 2024, which Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said was ‘quite likely’ the work of Russian saboteurs.
Exploding parcels on cargo planes
Last autumn, UK counter-terrorism police were investigating whether Russian spies planted an explosive device on a plane which sparked a warehouse fire in Birmingham.
No person was injured in the course of the outbreak on the Minworth factory, and the fireplace was reportedly handled by staff members and native firefighters.
However the incident raised suspicion after it was revealed a near-identical fire occurred at a DHL warehouse in Leipzig, Germany, with one other suspect package certain for a flight considered the source of the blaze.
Metro previously revealed how Russia’s plotting on planes could lead on to them orchestrating a mass-casualty terrorist attack in Europe.
Chatham House Russia expert Keir Giles said innocent civilians are ‘likely’ to be victims within the nation’s ‘hidden war’ against European countries after they routinely backed Ukraine following Russia’s invasion in 2022.
Mr Giles told Metro: ‘Previously, Russia has sponsored terrorist movements which carried out armed attacks against European countries throughout the Cold War.
‘Now with these airline parcel plots, the willingness from Russia to cause mass casualties has returned.
‘Europe is bearing the brunt of those attacks. We should always soon expect a surge in Russian state terrorist attacks across Europe.’
Targeting flights with electronic attacks
Russia is suspected to have been targeting aircraft systems for years, but only caught attention for affecting RyanAir, Wizz-Air, British Airlines, Easyjet, TUI and Jet2 in early 2024.
Between August 2023 and March 2024 alone, 46,000 flights in areas resembling the Baltic, Black Sea and eastern Mediterranean logged interference issues.
The UK Civil Aviation Authority has insisted that flying continues to be secure as there are ‘several protocols’ in place to guard their systems onboard.
Yet the warnings about suspected Russian interference in on a regular basis flights went seemingly unheeded for years.
Chatham House Russian expert Keir Giles, who’s accustomed to planes, told Metro that disrupting electronic systems is a technique Russia can practise for war with Nato.
Mounting cyber attacks
Cyber attack threats have also been on the rise from foreign countries.
In early 2023, government minister Oliver Dowden revealed the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) issued an ‘official threat notice’ to those that operate critical national infrastructure.
The NCSC said there was an ’emerging risk posed by state-aligned adversaries’ because of this of the Russia-Ukraine war, and organisations needed to ‘act now’ to guard themselves against attacks.
Mr Dowden said these Russian-aligned groups now have a motive to ‘disrupt or destroy’ UK infrastructure.
‘Russia is at war with us – we just don’t understand it’
Earlier this week, Samantha de Bendern, Associate Fellow of the Russia and Eurasia Programme at Chatham House, told Metro these acts of sabotage ought to be considered acts of terrorism.
de Bendern argued: ‘But Russia is at war with us. We just don’t understand it. I feel people will only wake as much as this threat when a missile falls on a European capital or European city.
‘Russia is counting on us being the frog in boiling water. It’s counting on the indisputable fact that it can make us get used to having airports closed because drones are flying over them.
‘We’ve had Russia use chemical warfare on British soil with Skripal Novichok. We’ve had Russia use byproducts of the military nuclear complex by utilizing plutonium on British soil that hardly registered a blink. I feel, unfortunately, it’s going to take something catastrophic on NATO soil for us to grasp,’ de Bendern adds.
‘People keep saying, ‘We don’t wish to send our boys to die for Ukraine, we don’t wish to go to war with Russia.”
‘I agree with that. I even have a son who can be sufficiently old to go and fight. I don’t want him to go and fight for Ukraine either,’ she says.
‘But we want to grasp that if Ukraine falls, we might be next. In a technique or one other, we might be next.’
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