NATO hits back against Putin’s worldwide campaign of assassination and sabotage

Russia is no longer just fighting its war on the battlefields of Ukraine. The Kremlin is also engaging globally in hybrid warfare. 

Although Russian President Vladimir Putin’s generals are failing on the battlefields of Ukraine, Russia’s FSB, the successor agency to the Soviet KGB, is succeeding, conducting espionage, disinformation, sabotage and assassinations. And with Putin at the helm, they may have become the main effort.

Increasingly, assassinations have moved to the forefront.                   

U.S. intelligence discovered a Russian plot earlier this year to assassinate Armin Papperger, the chief executive of Rheinmetall, a German arms manufacturer that has been producing 155mm artillery shells and military vehicles for Ukraine. It was just one of several plans to assassinate defense industry executives across Europe who are supporting the Ukraine war.

This time, Washington was able to alert their counterparts in Berlin, whose security forces protected Papperger and foiled the plot.

Assassination has long proved an effective Kremlin tool. Dissidents, oligarchs, active and retired general officers, senior ranking party members and Yevgeny Prigozhin routinely fall out of windows, succumb to hot beverages laced with poison, suffer mysterious heart attacks, meet fiery ends in jet crashes and die of lead poisoning from 9mm Makarov pistols.

Moscow will likely take note of the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump at a political rally over the weekend, and the added political division it has created across the U.S. It may well create added interest in the Kremlin to increase the use of political murder in the capitals and streets of NATO.

Putin has tried this before. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has survived multiple attempts on his life by Wagner mercenaries and Chechen special forces. In March, he narrowly escaped a Russian missile strike that exploded 500 meters from the convoy carrying him and Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis while in the Black Sea port city of Odesa. 

The scale of Putin’s growing hybrid warfare extends far beyond assassinations, though. FSB operators and facilitators have been active throughout Europe, North Africa, the Middle East and the U.S. They actively post misinformation and disinformation on social media. Recruit spies and traitors. Conduct surveillance. And execute sabotage operations. 

Porous borders provide unrestricted access to the country for Russia and for their operatives intent on conducting mayhem. Known encounters with illegal immigrants crossing the southern border since Russia invaded Ukraine included 21,763 Russian citizens in 2022, and 33,000 in 2023.

Those numbers do not include “sleeper agents” who have been in the U.S. for years posing as loyal American citizens. Although the FX mini-series “The Americans” is a fictional story, it is grounded in a reality that poses a significant insider threat to the country.

We are already seeing this overtly play out across Europe. Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas describes it as a Russian “shadow war” against the West.

Last month, French police arrested a 26-year-old Russian-Ukrainian man who was wounded while making an explosive device in his hotel room near Charles de Gaulle international airport. His target was a Bricorama home improvement store. The French domestic intelligence agency described the incident as “part of a vast sabotage campaign orchestrated in Moscow.”

In early May, Britain expelled Russian defense attaché Maxim Elovik, a Russian colonel described as an “undeclared military intelligence officer.” They also rescinded the diplomatic status of several Russian-owned properties that were being used for intelligence purposes.

Then in late May, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk announced that 12 people had been arrested on allegations of having engaged in “acts of sabotage…on commission from Russian (intelligence) services.” He described them as “hired people, sometimes from the criminal world, and nationals of Ukraine, Belarus and Poland.”

Increasingly, the arsenals of democracy arming Ukraine’s war effort are coming under attack, especially production plants for artillery rounds and weapons. On April 14, an explosion ripped through the BAE Systems munitions factory in Glascoed, the United Kingdom’s last remaining ammunition-filling facility.

On 15 April, a fire inexplicably occurred at the Scranton Army Ammunition Plant in Pennsylvania. The Joint Munitions Command facility, which produces 155mm and 105mm artillery rounds, and 120mm mortar rounds, is owned by the U.S. military but operated by General Dynamics-Ordnance and Tactical Systems.  

Another fire took place on May 4 at the Diehl Metal Applications metallurgical plant located in the Lichterfelde area of Berlin. DMA is a subsidiary of the German Diehl Group, which also manufactures the IRIS-T missiles being used in Ukraine. 

Yet another fire broke out on June 10, this time at the Mesko weapons plant in Skarżysko-Kamienn, Poland. The incident took place in one of the production units of the factory, igniting a fire that quickly spread through the facility. Mesko produces shoulder-fired air defense missiles, portable anti-tank and anti-personnel missiles and small arms ammunition, which Poland has sent to Ukraine to defend itself.

Finally, NATO has had enough. Last week in Washington. NATO leaders issued the Washington Summit Declaration. Item 13 of the Declaration reads, “State and non-state actors are using increasingly aggressive hybrid actions against Allies. We will continue to prepare for, deter, defend against, and counter hybrid threats and challenges. We reiterate that hybrid operations against Allies could reach the level of an armed attack and could lead the North Atlantic Council to invoke Article 5 of the Washington Treaty.”

Item 14 reads: “We will continue to develop our individual and collective capacity to analyze and counter hostile disinformation and misinformation operations. NATO is closely coordinating with Allies and partners.  We have increased our alert and sharing mechanisms and strengthened our joint responses, in particular in strategic communication.”

Moscow should take note of Item 13 of the declaration. If Putin does not back off of his hybrid warfare, NATO could be much closer than he realizes to invoking Article V, the organization’s core collective defense clause.

The time is now for NATO to display some intestinal fortitude, chase off the Russian bear at its gates and remind Putin and his generals that NATO has offensive capabilities as well. 

Col. (Ret.) Jonathan Sweet served 30 years as a military intelligence officer and led the U.S. European Command Intelligence Engagement Division from 2012 to 2014. Mark Toth writes on national security and foreign policy.