Over the past three years, Russia has waged an increasingly brazen campaign of sabotage and subversion against Ukraine’s European allies. In 2024, Moscow significantly escalated its tactics—turning to assassination, compromising water facilities across several European countries, and targeting civil aviation.
Just this week, Duma member Alexander Kazakov claimed Russian sabotage in the Baltic Sea was part of a military operation aimed at provoking NATO and enlarging Russia’s control over the area. While events such as the cutting of undersea cables have garnered substantial media attention, no systematic effort has been made to assess the full scope and nature of Russia’s actions against Europe. Analysis from Leiden University exposes how far Russia is willing to go to weaken its European adversaries and isolate Ukraine from vital support. It paints a chilling picture of the potential for Russian escalation below the nuclear threshold—and underlines the need for a concerted and assertive European response, which has been lacking so far.
Over the past three years, Russia has waged an increasingly brazen campaign of sabotage and subversion against Ukraine’s European allies. In 2024, Moscow significantly escalated its tactics—turning to assassination, compromising water facilities across several European countries, and targeting civil aviation.
Just this week, Duma member Alexander Kazakov claimed Russian sabotage in the Baltic Sea was part of a military operation aimed at provoking NATO and enlarging Russia’s control over the area. While events such as the cutting of undersea cables have garnered substantial media attention, no systematic effort has been made to assess the full scope and nature of Russia’s actions against Europe. Analysis from Leiden University exposes how far Russia is willing to go to weaken its European adversaries and isolate Ukraine from vital support. It paints a chilling picture of the potential for Russian escalation below the nuclear threshold—and underlines the need for a concerted and assertive European response, which has been lacking so far.
Amid increasing doubts over the United States’ continued willingness to guarantee European security and provide military aid to Ukraine, as well as escalating Russian attacks, Europe cannot afford to dither on increasing its own military capabilities.
Based on an overview of Russian operations in the physical domain, excluding most cyber operations, Leiden University’s research highlights how Moscow is increasingly escalating beyond its long-standing campaigns of espionage and digital disruption. Even using a conservative metric for attribution, Russian operations against Europe have surged from 6 in 2022 to 13 in 2023 and 44 in 2024. Most of these incidents involve preparations for sabotage. Targets have ranged from critical undersea energy and communications infrastructure in the North and Baltic seas to military bases, warehouses, and armaments plants. Another common Russian tactic has been influence operations that target European politicians to erode political support for Ukraine, both at the European Union and national levels. A key example is the Voice of Europe scandal, which centered on a radical news site that became a tool for the Kremlin to platform Russia-friendly content and funnel money to pro-Russian politicians in various European countries.
Alongside these more sophisticated measures, there have been numerous acts of vandalism seemingly designed to sow confusion and disrupt daily life. This suggests a dual operational approach, combining actions carried out by opportunistic criminals recruited via platforms like Telegram with plots by operatives linked to state agencies such as the GRU.
In 2024, Russian operations against Europe sharply intensified, both in frequency and scope. In addition to an uptick in sabotage efforts, Moscow expanded its tactics to include targeted assassinations, killing a pilot who defected, targeting the CEO of German arms manufacturer Rheinmetall, and enlisting a Polish national in a plot to kill Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. The escalation also included more indiscriminate acts of violence, such as placing incendiary devices on DHL flights—which would have caused catastrophes if they had detonated mid-air. Instead, they went off in storage facilities in the United Kingdom and Germany shortly before or after being transported by air. Some Western security officials now suspect these operations were rehearsals for future attacks on U.S.-bound airliners, meaning that Russia has effectively escalated to acts of state-directed terrorism. The threat to civil aviation is further exacerbated by a growing number of GPS-jamming incidents along Russia’s western border, as well as drone incursions over civilian airports. Moscow’s blatant disregard for civilian life and its involvement in shooting down commercial airliners (such as a Malaysia Airlines flight in 2014 and an Azerbaijan Airlines flight in December 2024) underscore the very real dangers that these operations pose to air travel over Europe.
To fully understand the qualitative escalation of Russian operations against Europe in 2024, though, it’s important to consider a broader range of incidents. Terrorism, or the use of deadly violence for political ends, extended beyond the attacks on DHL flights. Arguably, it also includes the Moscow-directed plots that materialized last year, when schools in Slovakia and the Czech Republic received more than a thousand bomb threats that lead to several days of closures. Finally, a range of break-ins at water treatment plants raise the specter of sabotage operations capable of causing truly widespread harm to the physical safety of Europe’s citizens. That such potential is anything but theoretical was demonstrated by the Swedish authorities recommending that affected residents boil their drinking water. Taken together, these activities mark a troubling new phase in Russian tactics against Europe that directly threatens the lives of its inhabitants.
Attributing intent to covert operations is notoriously difficult, but Russia appears to be pursuing two primary goals: first, undermining the willingness of Europe’s politicians and citizens to continue providing military aid to Ukraine; second, to signal the extent to which it is willing to escalate in pursuit of this aim. While Russia’s operations to date have caused significant concern, the actual damage inflicted has been relatively limited. The greater danger lies in the level of violence and disruption that the Kremlin appears willing to use in the future.
In discussions of what quantity or quality of aid to Ukraine could trigger a Russian red line and provoke escalation, the focus has largely been on the threat of nuclear weapons. However, Leiden University’s analysis suggests that escalation is more likely to occur below the nuclear threshold—and offers a glimpse of what that might entail: bombings of civilian airlines, sabotage of undersea infrastructure that could leave large portions of Europe without power or internet access, targeted assassinations of key industrial leaders, and attacks on water supplies that could jeopardize the health of hundreds of thousands of Europeans. There are also downstream effects to reckon with; as European security services pivot toward countering state-based threats, counterterrorism coverage is likely to suffer, potentially providing opportunities for nonstate actors, such as Islamic State, to strike. Clearly, addressing Russia’s increasingly aggressive stance toward Europe will require a multifaceted response.
In December 2024, NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte warned that Europeans must “shift to a wartime mindset.” For a continent long accustomed to peace, this will be a difficult but necessary adjustment—not only due to Ukraine’s slow but steady loss of territory to Russia, but also because the incoming U.S. administration, under President-elect Donald Trump, has signaled a reluctance to further arm Ukraine and openly threatened to abandon NATO allies that fail to meet their defense obligations.
Despite the urgency of the situation—and the data reveals that Germany and France are emerging as the most targeted countries—Europe’s attention appears divided. Key powers like Germany and France are preoccupied with economic downturns, budget deficits, and rising political turmoil, undercutting their ability to significantly ramp up their commitments to Ukraine. The United Kingdom, Europe’s other major military power, is facing significant cuts on defense spending, despite the worsening international security situation. In Romania, a pro-Russian candidate recently won the first round of the presidential election (although it has now been annulled). Writing from the Netherlands, the news cycle has, for months, been dominated by the twists and turns of an unstable coalition government that seems focused primarily on domestic affairs.
After three years of escalating Russian aggression, the threat that Europe faces is broadly acknowledged. Yet, many European politicians still seem hesitant to take the necessary steps to address it, perhaps wary of voter backlash when difficult decisions need to be made on financing increased military expenditure. For their part, many voters appear to want a reorientation on domestic matters over international ones, taking a “first us, then them” approach as a recent Dutch study summarized.
Yet, if Europe does not recalibrate its priorities and respond with unity and commitment, the consequences could be dire—not only for Ukraine, but for the continent’s longer-term security and its place in the NATO alliance.
To shore up Europe’s security, a more assertive posture toward Russian operations is needed. The Finnish authorities’ decision to board and detain a cargo ship suspected of damaging an undersea cable last December and NATO’s decision to strengthen its naval presence in the Baltic Sea are positive signs in this regard. More fundamentally, Europe needs to define its own red lines in response to Moscow’s provocations. So far, discussions around escalation risks have largely been reactive, focused on the type of Western aid to Ukraine that could trigger a Russian response, rather than the establishment of clear thresholds for European retaliatory measures. These could include further sanctions or the appropriation of frozen Russian assets, as well as the delivery of additional weapon systems to Ukraine and even the establishment of a no-fly zone over the country. A publicly communicated commitment to retaliate against sabotage, supported by a credible threat, could provide deterrent capabilities that are currently lacking.
As part of this more assertive posture, Europe will need to invest in strengthening its intelligence services—both to maximize their ability to deal with the heightened Russian threat and to maintain a high level of counterterrorism capability toward nonstate extremists, such as the Islamic State. In the longer term, Europe must finally make serious and concerted efforts to reinvigorate its own armament industry, which is crucial to maintaining an ability to supply Ukraine regardless of U.S. foreign-policy priorities, as well as autonomously safeguarding the security on which the continent’s prosperity ultimately depends. None of this will come about easily, especially in a continent infamous for its inability to organize its own collective security. But the stakes are high and extend beyond the need to support Ukraine and ward off future Russian aggression. Essentially, the question is whether Europe’s liberal democracies can withstand the pressures of autocratic revanchism, or whether their ideals will falter under an inability to safeguard them through military means. With democracy under threat worldwide, Europe cannot afford to waver in the face of Russia’s imperialist ambitions.
Stijn Willem van ‘t Land and Dion Jordens assisted with data collection.
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