Europe is under sustained Russian assault.
Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, acts of physical aggression against NATO’s European domain have surged beyond even Cold War levels. Sabotaging critical infrastructure, targeted arson and bombing attacks against civilian cities, disrupting transportation and communication, and carrying out assassination attempts on defense executives and Russian opposition leaders, Russia is waging a “shadow war” — a concerted and coordinated campaign of attacks designed to degrade and demotivate its adversary without provoking a military reprisal.
Russia’s shadow war targets more than just the physical vulnerabilities of Western economies and societies. The generals and intelligence chiefs prosecuting this war have gaps in NATO’s systems of decision-making and response in their sights. Operating covertly and below the threshold of traditional warfare, Russia complicates the tasks of recognition (were we attacked?), attribution (who attacked us?), and definition (are we at war?), without which no adequate response is possible. As a result, law enforcement agencies, rather than national security organizations, deal with such attacks — if they are dealt with at all.
This asymmetry allows Moscow to prosecute its war with the West far from the front lines in Ukraine. Indeed, leaked Russian Foreign Ministry Documents lay bare the centrality of shadow warfare to cowing the West into capitulation, in Ukraine and more broadly. By contrast, Western governments have been slow to recognize the nature of the challenge. Western capitals need a strategy for mitigating and deterring Russian shadow warfare for at least the medium term, given both the central role played by this conflict to the sustainability of the current Russian regime and the likelihood that conflict will continue even after the fighting stops in Ukraine.
While policymakers are increasingly aware of the problem, there is a lack of the analytical clarity necessary to formulate a set of responses that would deny Russia’s ability to inflict substantial damage and deter its willingness to pursue shadow warfare. In an increasingly unstable environment, policymakers and experts must have a holistic and comprehensive understanding of the scale of the renewed challenge, Russia’s changing strategic objectives, and the decision-making processes and personnel they are up against. As a result, NATO responses to the increased aggressiveness and recklessness of Russian shadow activity have been belated, timid, and/or altogether absent.
To address these challenges, CEPA is convening a transatlantic task force, comprising national security professionals, forensic researchers, and investigative journalists charged with deepening our understanding of:
- How Russian shadow warfare contributes to and expands Moscow’s war in Ukraine;
- The actors and governance structures involved in prosecuting Russia’s shadow war;
- Gaps in NATO’s understanding and awareness of its vulnerabilities to Russian shadow warfare; and
- How NATO’s critical deterrent and retaliatory capabilities can be deployed to defend against, deny, and deter Russian shadow warfare.
Among CEPA’s leading experts are former Lithuanian Ambassador-at-Large for hybrid threats Eitvydas Bajarūnas, former Latvian Interior Minister Marija Golubeva, national security journalist Edward Lucas, physical and energy security investigator Benjamin Schmitt, and Russian intelligence experts Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan, and others, including CEPA’s President and CEO, Alina Polyakova.
