The Kremlin has unleashed a new sabotage campaign against European defense facilities supplying Ukraine, operating under a plausible denial strategy designed to avoid crossing the threshold that would activate NATO's Article 5, according to Western intelligence sources cited by The Telegraph.
The tactic involves recruiting members of local criminal gangs to carry out the attacks, while the officials of the GRU —the Russian military intelligence agency— remain safe on Russian territory. The recruits receive instructions through messaging apps like Telegram and are paid in cryptocurrencies, often without knowing that they are working for Moscow.
Normunds Mežviets, head of the State Security Service of Latvia, explained clearly in an interview with The Telegraph: "In our experience, we do not see GRU officers physically traveling to our country. No, they stay in Russia, where they are safe. They do not take any risks for their own operational and physical security."
Only in August were three serious incidents recorded. On August 15, an arson fire destroyed a Milrem Robotics building in Tallinn, Estonia —a company that supplies unmanned ground vehicles to Ukraine and is one of only two foreign suppliers of this type of weaponry to Kiev—. Latvia arrested three of its own citizens in connection with the attack.
Five days earlier, on August 10, a large explosion devastated facilities of EMCO, one of the largest private ammunition manufacturers in Bulgaria, which produces 155 mm shells for the Ukrainian army. The fire was started by a burning truck parked next to a warehouse, and Bulgarian authorities declared a partial state of disaster within a 500-meter radius.
On August 13, it was the turn of the KNDS Ammo Italy plant in Colleferro, on the outskirts of Rome, where an explosion shook the powder processing unit. Both Italy and Bulgaria publicly downplayed any Russian implication, a reaction that, according to analysts, precisely reflects the division that Moscow seeks to exploit within the Alliance.
The pattern goes back further. In March, a fire almost destroyed the Czech plant of LPP Holding in Pardubice, which manufactures drones and thermal optics for Ukraine, with four suspects arrested.
Lithuania, for its part, prosecuted six individuals —including Cuban nationals accused of sabotage linked to Russia— for attempting to set fire to a factory that produced radio spectrum analysis equipment for Kiev, in an operation that the prosecution directly attributed to the GRU.
A NATO official warned that "in recent years, Russia has accelerated its destabilization campaigns against allies through cyberattacks, assassination attempts, and acts of sabotage."
The strategy, according to Western intelligence, is calculated to stay just below the threshold that would activate the collective mutual defense clause, while Moscow assesses how far it can push without triggering a response from the Alliance.
This escalation occurs in a context of increasing tension: at the end of July, a Russian Kh-101 missile struck Polish territory, in what was described as the most serious violation of NATO airspace since the beginning of the invasion.
Days later, U.S. intelligence warned that Putin could authorize hybrid operations and deniable measures on allied territory to gauge the Western response.
The Secretary General of NATO, Mark Rutte, has warned that Putin is preparing Russia to use force against the Alliance "in five years," and that every attack that goes unpunished allows Moscow to refine its understanding of the Alliance's limits.
What started as a concentrated threat on the eastern flank, concludes The Telegraph, «is shifting to the west and becoming the new normal in the confrontation between the Alliance and Moscow».
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