Russia ups hybrid war against the West

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 30/10/2024 (367 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Ukraine’s allies have been at pains to support its defence without being dragged into direct fighting with Russia. But Vladimir Putin’s regime doesn’t see it this way. To them, their country is already locked in an existential struggle with the world’s liberal democracies.

Yet while Russia’s war machine may outgun Ukraine, it’s dwarfed by the firepower of NATO. The Kremlin knows this. Moscow has thus opted for a shadowy campaign of sabotage targeting Kyiv’s backers, preferring to stay below the threshold of armed conflict.

Russian hackers have regularly disrupted the continent’s rail networks by altering the communications and ticketing systems of train companies. Russia is also accused of manipulating GPS signals in the Baltic states. Germany foiled a plot in July to murder the CEO of the country’s largest arms manufacturer, Rheinmetall — a major supplier of munitions and combat vehicles to Ukraine. This past spring, retail centres were torched across Poland in a suspicious wave of fires.

All of this is happening alongside the intimidation, harassment and assassination of Russian dissidents in western countries. Counterterrorism authorities are also investigating whether Russian actors are responsible for planting flammable devices on international courier planes that have gone on to set warehouses ablaze in England and elsewhere.

It all adds up to a “sustained mission to generate mayhem and confusion on British and European streets,” the head of MI5, the U.K.’s domestic intelligence agency, told reporters in early October. The expulsion of hundreds of Russian diplomats from Europe, he says, means Russia is hiring criminal gangs and freelance operatives to do their dirty work. This can make it easier to interfere with Moscow’s plans. Although it also suggests they are being executed more recklessly.

Canada’s Communications Security Establishment and its peers reported last month how Russian military intelligence agents have been targeting adversaries’ critical infrastructure with malware and wide-ranging cyberattacks going as far back as 2020. This includes sectors such as government and financial services, energy firms and health-care providers.

American authorities say Russia has also spent at least US$300 million to try to swing elections in dozens of countries since launching its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. This happened most recently in Moldova.

Russia retains pockets of support in the former Soviet territory and has roughly 1,500 soldiers stationed in Moldova’s breakaway region of Transnistria. A referendum on Oct. 20 on whether the impoverished country of 2.6 million should join the European Union passed by only 0.5 per cent despite polls showing overwhelming public support for doing so. Moldovan officials allege this razor-thin margin resulted from a Russia-orchestrated scheme where at least 150,000 voters accepted money from fraudsters to vote against EU membership.

The U.S. intelligence community anticipates Russia will try to tamper with presidential polls on Nov. 5 — and then cast doubt on the outcome afterward. This includes Kremlin trolls and bots sowing disinformation to stoke unrest and political violence against election workers and politicians ahead of either Kamala Harris or Donald Trump being inaugurated as America’s next president in January.

Russian forces are making slow but steady progress capturing positions in eastern Ukraine as well. And allies’ support for the embattled democracy is fraying. As the war drags on, rumblings are growing louder in many western capitals suggesting Kyiv should sacrifice the territory it’s lost if it will halt the war.

But that strategy is flawed, according to journalist Anne Applebaum, a Pulitzer Prize-winning expert on Russian authoritarianism. None of the voices advocating for Ukraine to trade its land for supposed peace, she says, can explain Russia’s incentive to accept or honour such a deal.

Rather, Russia’s autocratic leader must be forced — militarily or otherwise — to end his imperial quest.

“Right now, the actual obstacle is Putin,” Applebaum argued recently. “It is the Russians who have to be persuaded to stop fighting. It is the Russians who do not want to end the war.”

“As the outlook in Ukraine darkens, there is growing pressure in Washington for a negotiated settlement,” echoed prominent American foreign affairs scholar Hal Brands for Bloomberg earlier this month. “The challenge is that no one has figured out how to turn a deteriorating battlefield situation into a decent peace. Indeed, a peace deal — be it good or bad for Ukraine — won’t bring a lasting resolution to this saga.”

The reason: Putin views annihilating Ukraine’s sovereignty as vital to cementing his legacy.

All told, until Russia subjugates Ukraine — or its allies abandon it — expect the Kremlin’s hybrid war against the West to keep escalating.

Kyle Hiebert is a Winnipeg-based political risk analyst and former deputy editor of the Africa Conflict Monitor.