‘There has to be a cost’ Russian sabotage spiked in Europe last year. So why don’t Western officials do more to stop it?
Russia intensified its sabotage efforts in Europe last year as part of a violent campaign against both European and U.S. targets on the continent, according to a new report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). Tracking sabotage and subversion activities from January 2022 until March 2025, the study produced a database of verified Russian attacks across Europe, ranging from warehouse explosions and undersea cable cutting to assassinations. Kremlin officials have repeatedly denied Russian involvement in such attacks, though they appear to complement Moscow’s ongoing war against Ukraine. With this in mind, Western countries have taken a defensive approach to countering this covert campaign so far. But according to the report’s author, former U.S. defense official Seth G. Jones, going on the offensive would be the most effective form of deterrence.
The number of Russian sabotage attacks in European countries almost tripled between 2023 and 2024, increasing from 12 to 34, according to a report released by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). These incidents were largely concentrated in NATO’s eastern flank, namely in the Baltic countries, Finland, Poland, and the Baltic Sea. But proximity to Russia isn’t the only common denominator.
“What we found is that a number of the sabotage operations were targeting, either directly or indirectly, things connected to the war in Ukraine,” said Seth G. Jones, the report’s author and a former U.S. Defense Department official.
The ongoing campaign, which is likely the work of Russia’s military intelligence service (the GRU), appears to mainly target countries and companies that provide aid to Kyiv, including those producing weapons and other military equipment shipped to Ukraine. Jones characterized it as an “irregular” or “hybrid” warfare effort, akin to the Soviet KGB’s “active measures” during the Cold War. “It’s a tool in a broader toolkit used against adversaries,” he told Meduza. “I think their objective [is] to signal that there are costs that could be escalated for this kind of assistance to Ukraine.”
“It’s also interesting to note which countries have not been targeted,” Jones added, pointing to Hungary, which has consistently aligned itself with Moscow, as an example. (The report also singles out Serbia, while noting that there are other countries with no recorded attacks, such as Switzerland and Romania.) “It appears that there have been very deliberate decisions of what and who gets hit and who and what doesn’t.”
‘Unnecessary risk aversion’
The rise in Russian sabotage in Europe coincides with an increase in Western military support for Ukraine over the past two years, including supplies of new weapons systems and easing restrictions on strikes deeper inside Russian territory. During this time, many Western allies — including the Biden administration — vowed to support Ukraine “for as long as it takes.”
But upon returning to the White House in January, Donald Trump broke with this policy right away. Intent on brokering a peace between Russia and Ukraine, his administration began bilateral negotiations with Moscow and, instead of ratcheting up pressure on the Kremlin, started using military aid as leverage over Kyiv.
With U.S. support no longer a given, European leaders now face the prospect of having to provide a greater share of military assistance to Ukraine. And senior European officials interviewed as part of the CSIS study predicted that Russian attacks on the continent would continue or even increase this year if Europe begins ramping up aid to Kyiv, Jones said.
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“We will likely see a fair amount of Russian activity in [Europe] either by Russian intelligence and military intelligence operatives like the GRU, various military units, or assets that were trained by them,” Jones told Meduza. “I would expect that against European targets, not necessarily against U.S. ones,” he added.
Jones doubts that the sabotage campaign has been particularly effective in furthering Russia’s broader foreign policy aims. But taken together with Vladimir Putin’s nuclear sabre rattling and fears of the fighting in Ukraine spilling over into “World War III,” it has given Western officials cause for concern. “Both the Americans and Europeans have certainly been very careful about escalation,” he said.
In his view, these worries have tempered the Western response, which has so far relied on “defensive measures” like improving intelligence sharing, strengthening critical infrastructure and cyber networks, and expelling Russian diplomats and intelligence officials. “A number of European countries — and I think it’s probably the case in the U.S., as well — have definitely been nervous about the possibility of escalation if they go after the Russians offensively,” Jones told Meduza.
“It’s a very different approach from the one the U.S. took in the 1980s against the Soviets and Warsaw Pact countries, where they went on offense,” he said. “I think there’s unnecessary risk aversion.”
A question of will
While Jones argues in his report that it’s time for Western countries to raise the costs for Russia’s covert operations, the Trump administration appears to be taking the opposite tack. In fact, current and former officials told Reuters this week that multiple U.S. national security agencies have paused coordinated efforts to monitor and combat the Kremlin’s sabotage campaign.
Russia, meanwhile, appears to be recalibrating, as well. “We don’t have any cases in 2025 of a plot or an attack against a U.S. target like a base. We did in 2024, including at bases where Ukrainians were trained,” Jones noted. “That may be because there’s a new president and they’re waiting to see how the negotiations pan out, so the Russians are holding off.”
An unnamed Western official also told the The New York Times that Russia has scaled back its sabotage efforts in recent weeks. At the same time, Kremlin officials continue to deny any involvement in committing sabotage in Europe. Earlier this month, Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov dismissed the accusations against Russia as “empty and ephemeral.”
As Trump continues to negotiate with Putin, Jones believes there’s little appetite in Washington for countering sabotage with “offensive operations.” But that could change “if the Ukraine negotiations actually break down and you start to see a split between Washington and Moscow,” he said. “I don’t think that’s likely, but that could be where tensions really start to increase.”
That said, Jones believes that European countries could revamp their strategy for countering Russian hybrid warfare even without U.S. support. “The British have a robust history of being willing to ramp up action below the threshold of conventional war. The Poles are capable, Finland’s got strong capabilities, so do the French,” he said. “I think it’s a question of do they have the will to start responding to Russian aggression in this irregular and hybrid arena.”
“Just defensive measures generally are not sufficient to send a very strong deterrent message,” Jones underscored. “There has to be a cost.”
Story by Eilish Hart