The Kremlin is increasing sabotage operations across Europe. There have been arson attacks at drone factories, incendiary devices thrown at a producer of encryption tools for government networks, and rocket attacks on power grids.
Among incidents that are now almost routine in Germany, Poland, and the Baltic states, Ukraine’s most consistent supporters, the attack by three drones at Leipzig airport in August – which by a miracle failed to kill or maim – stands apart as a clear escalation.
German Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt, blaming Russia for this sabotage attack, said: “We do not view the incident in Leipzig as an isolated case, but rather see it in the context of other hybrid actions.” He continued: “We proceed from the assumption that Germany will become a target for further hybrid attacks by Russia.”
He’s right. While his assessment offers a gloomy view of European security, it is also realistic. The continent has been deeply shaken by the brazen and worsening sabotage campaign organized by the Kremlin and its intelligence agencies since the beginning of the war in Ukraine.
Against this backdrop, there is a growing demand for a swift solution, some sort of a magic bullet that can force Russia to stop its hybrid war.
The chances of finding this are very slim, as is the case in any complex geopolitical conflict. And yet, European governments appear to be looking for exactly that. Since they have no adequate tactical response, they seek a political solution. This consists, in part, of sending warning signals to Moscow – by reacting to attacks with statements of support for Ukraine and for those European countries that are affected; publicly admitting their drones have been operating into Russia to make the point that the Kremlin is not escaping scot-free; promising new weapons to Ukraine, more sanctions, more restrictions for Russians traveling, and so on.
Could this kind of messaging have a desirable effect? Almost certainly not.
More public pressure on Moscow has the risk of strengthening the siege mentality inside the fortress, and that is exactly what Putin needs. The very last to be affected by the sanctions would be the Russian intelligence agencies that are behind most of the attacks.
Others will feel the pain first, from Russian industry, oligarchs, ordinary citizens, and businessmen well above them on the list. It’s true that sanctions slow the Russian army. To keep fighting, the military needs access to technology and resources that may be blocked by sanctions. But the intelligence agencies organizing the attacks won’t be affected – they are organizing small-budget, low-tech operations.
And anyway, they are not easily deterred. As we have written previously, the Kremlin’s intelligence and security agencies consider the war in Ukraine part of an existential conflict with the West.
They believe that Moscow’s defeat would cause Russia’s collapse, and that this would be followed by direct repression against them. That is the lesson they drew from the collapse of the Russian Empire in 1917 and of the Soviet Union in 1991.
No truce or peace settlement could ever satisfy such a paranoid worldview, in which the West’s central long-term strategy is the destruction of Russia. Moscow’s agencies are therefore ready for a very long and painful conflict. Even the end of hostilities in Ukraine is unlikely to prompt Moscow to abandon sabotage as a tool to put pressure on European governments. It is, after all, very hard to answer or deter.
So, what can the West do? It needs a top-to-bottom strategy, not a series of patchwork steps. And the strategy’s architects should understand this: the time frame for the work to take effect will likely be measured in decades rather than years.
That was what Western powers ultimately concluded in the early years of the Cold War, when containment of the Soviet Union was a highly effective enterprise with a wide range of government agencies and organizations playing a role.
Something similar is needed now, with an acknowledgment that it will be harder this time because in those days the West never faced Soviet sabotage – this option was always there, but the Soviet government reserved it for the period of the hot war, which fortunately never came.
It may sound odd, but sabotage is politics and can be a means to successfully apply pressure.
Which creates another problem: the Russian leader and his spy agencies have demonstrated to anyone watching that sabotage can hurt Western governments and their populations. Just as with cyber-attacks and disinformation operations, the lessons of sabotage are likely to spread and be picked up by other actors – state and non-state alike.
And that is exactly what is happening. In 2016, left-wing and anarchist extremist groups were already a public order threat in Europe, using tactics like arson and attacks with explosives.
Take one example – in January, a blackout hit southwest Berlin. The authorities first suspected it was a job by Russian agents; it was in fact organized by the far-left.
Western societies have no choice but to prepare themselves for what appears to be the beginning of a crisis which has all the hallmarks of a long and costly campaign – a future in which sabotage becomes a normal instrument of political warfare.
And that means creating permanent mechanisms to work on a cohesive, multi-agency strategy, shared and supported by as many Western nations as possible.
Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan are Non-resident Senior Fellows with the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA). They are Russian investigative journalists and co-founders of Agentura.ru, a watchdog of Russian secret service activities. Their book , Our Dear Friends in Moscow, The Inside Story of a Broken Generation, was published in 2025.
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
