How should the West combat Russian sabotage?

Looking back, Estonian authorities are confident that they responded to the May 2024 buoy incident to the best of their ability. Estonian border guards caught the Russian theft on video. Several uniformed men on a patrol boat slowly moved up the river between the two countries and systematically removed 25 of the 50 buoys Estonia had set up to mark the border. “Moscow is testing our reaction,” Egert Velichev, head of Estonia’s police and border protection department, told me while watching the tape. “If we don’t respond, they will go further.”

Estonia, a small country of 1.4 million people once occupied by the Soviet Union, has long seen itself as a front line between Russia and the West, and Estonians have been involved in escalating protests in other parts of Europe. We are used to so-called “hybrid” invasions. The past few months. The day after the buoy incident, the Foreign Minister summoned Moscow’s top diplomat in Tallinn and told him without hesitation that the theft was unacceptable. Will it be enough to prevent similar sabotage this year? Beritshev ignored the question. “We couldn’t follow that provocation,” he explains. “We will not enter Russian territory. Our job is to keep Estonians safe, not to start World War III.”

It took several years for the rest of Europe to realize the growing challenge posed by Moscow’s shadow war. But how should officials across the continent respond as provocations become more frequent and threatening, not just cyberattacks and disinformation, but bomb threats, arson, and a failed assassination attempt last year? It’s bothering me.

Western countries’ commitment to the rule of law generally forbids an in-kind response – after all, what separates us from Russia, if not our commitment to a rules-based international order? I wonder if it is? However, it is not clear whether the means at hand will be sufficient to deter further Moscow aggression. In Western Europe, as in Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin believes in justice, but the civilized world has little rebuttal.

Cheap, easy to orchestrate, low risk for Moscow

Western intelligence officials have compiled a long list of hybrid incidents that they believe can be traced back to Moscow. Last year alone, there were arson attacks at a shopping mall in Warsaw, a weapons factory in Germany and a Ukrainian-owned logistics company in London. The assassination plot targeted Armin Pappelger, chief executive officer of German arms manufacturer Rheinmetall, a major European manufacturer of artillery and military vehicles for Ukraine. Among the most alarming incidents were the explosions at DHL cargo facilities in Lithuania and the United Kingdom in July of improvised incendiary devices that security officials believe were intended to explode on transatlantic flights. Ta.

In November, the focus shifted to the Baltic Sea. This is the latest in a series of incidents involving private tankers believed to have ties to Russia or China. All told, three ships have dragged anchors over undersea cables and gas pipelines in the past year, severing vital links between European countries. But Marek Kov, a former Estonian intelligence officer who now works at the International Defense and Security Center in Tallinn, said all of this sabotage was linked to allegations of Russian government interference in this fall’s elections in Georgia, Moldova and Romania. It is not something to be worried about. “Terrorism is nothing compared to a stolen presidency,” Korff said.

What these incidents have in common is that compared to military aggression, hybrid warfare is cheaper, easier to coordinate, and less risky for Moscow. The perpetrators are generally civilians, often drifters or petty criminals. Many are hired on the internet and paid in virtual currency. This makes it difficult for Western countries to track the invasion of Moscow, and the shadow tactics could trigger Article 5 of the NATO treaty, which obliges all member states to mutually defend against “armed attack.” Until recently, no one had imagined that there was such a thing.

What Moscow hopes to achieve varies from case to case. Cable cutting in the Baltic Sea tests Europe’s readiness and willingness to fight back against foreign invasions. Setting fire to commercial buildings in Germany, where public opinion is divided over support for Ukraine, could inflame debate and lead to a reduction in support. Establishing a puppet government in a neighboring country like Georgia is the ultimate strategy, but Moscow also wins by instilling fear in Western Europe. “People are wondering what will happen next,” said Maj. Gen. Andras Melillo, commander of the Estonian Defense Forces, at a conference I attended last month. “Terrorism? Full-scale military invasion? That’s the point of hybrids. Who knows?”

Some European countries, including Estonia, are more aware of this threat than others. But even those with open eyes often find it difficult to react. The first challenge is political will. Before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, many Western countries turned a blind eye to Moscow’s provocations. “Russia’s constant threats were tolerated in the interest of good relations,” Finnish researcher Minna Ohlander explains in a recent report for Carnegie Europe. Governments also fear widespread panic, and many would rather absorb the threat than risk retaliation from an aggressive Kremlin.

But even countries that want to fight back against shadow tactics are often at a loss as to how to do so. Tracing hybrid operations back to the person in the Kremlin who ordered them can be difficult. There is no agreement on who should be responsible for Europe’s response: the country that sustained the attacks, the European Union, NATO, or other third parties. And Western legal frameworks (domestic laws and multilateral agreements such as the NATO Treaty and the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea) have few provisions for shadow warfare, making it difficult for governments to justify counterattacking with force. It’s becoming difficult.

It is inconceivable that Western countries would respond in the same way as Israel and Ukraine, which allegedly hired Uzbek civilians to assassinate Russian General Igor Kirillov in Moscow last month. “You can’t exactly blow up their hospitals,” Estonian parliamentarian and former intelligence chief Erik Niles Kross told me in an interview. “We have to find another way to make things painful for them,” said Nele Lorenz, a researcher at the Estonian Center for International Defense and Security.As a result, “Western countries are always two or three steps behind. “They are reactive rather than proactive.”

What the West can do

Many Estonians believe that Russian threats, from the Soviet Union’s tyrannical control to regular sabotage and endless cyber attacks that have disrupted Estonian banks and government websites since 2007, He says he’s so used to it that he doesn’t think about it much anymore. But Estonia has extensive experience finding ways to respond within Western ethical and legal constraints.

Estonian officials say a possible first step, which is often harder than it seems, is to recognize the provocation and talk about it publicly — effectively putting the West at war with Moscow. Or at least admit that we are fighting a shadow war. The next step is also one that has been in preparation for many years in Estonia. For example, laying redundant cables under the Baltic Sea or strengthening public resilience by teaching people to recognize disinformation. A further third step is to track and share information about shadow attacks, as many countries across Europe have begun to do in several forums, including NATO and the EU.

More decisive action could take the form of sanctions. In mid-December, the EU took the first steps to implement the bloc’s new anti-hybrid sanctions framework, with asset freezes and travel bans targeting multiple Russian entities involved in shadow activities. Other possible responses include focusing on the perpetrators rather than the puppeteers, prosecuting petty criminals who commit sabotage, boarding and seizing the offending vessel in the Baltic Sea, as Finland recently did, or filing lawsuits. It is also possible to continue.

What some call an “asymmetric” response, such as increasing military aid to Ukraine, remains a third option for countries willing to act. It is no coincidence that Tallinn devotes a higher proportion of its GDP to military and humanitarian aid to Kyiv, at 2.5%, than any other Western country, according to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy.

Will this be enough to stop Russia’s shadow war? What Western countries have done so far does not seem to have had much of an impact on the Kremlin. Former intelligence officer Marek Kov is among those in Tallinn who want more aggressive action, including European cyberattacks against Russian forces and weapons manufacturers. “Just playing defense is not enough,” Korff told me in an interview. “Just playing defense without attacking is just a slower way to lose.”

The challenge for the West is not only to prepare for an invasion, but also to punish Moscow and convince the Kremlin that there is a price to pay for waging a hybrid war in Europe. Until we do, the attacks are sure to continue, with the West’s agonizing debate over how to fight back without trampling our values.