While the war in Ukraine grinds on, Russian spies are fighting on another front. Throughout Western countries, Russia’s intelligence agencies emulate earlier Soviet Cold War tactics and show the influence of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s KGB training on his foreign policy. Using deep undercover agents, sabotage, assassinations, and coups, Russia is working hard to extend its control over the West.
Russian strategy has long emphasized the “grey zone” of warfare, involving diplomacy and espionage in its efforts for greater global influence. With the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, it seemed that greater Western attention to Russian aggression might hamper Russian infiltration efforts. Shortly after the invasion, 600 officers of the Russian foreign intelligence service were deported from European states.
But Russian intelligence operations in the West have remained significant, often overlooked by the focus on Ukraine’s conventional war. There have been several suspected instances of sabotage in Western countries by Russian agents. In March, a group of British men hired by the Russian GRU military intelligence service set fire to a factory in London, England. In April, German authorities arrested two German-Russian men for conducting pre-attack surveillance of sensitive sites in Germany, including a U.S. military base.
More direct deadly action has also taken place, including the assassination of Russian defector Maksim Kuzminov in Spain last February. His body was found riddled with bullets on the beach. A month later, an unknown assailant attacked Leonid Volkov, an ally of the late Putin opponent Alexei Navalny, with a hammer near his home in Lithuania.
These attacks are not limited only to sabotage or individual assassinations, as Russia twice attempted to launch a coup in Moldova. It seems that Russia originally planned to occupy the country after it invaded Ukraine. However, following military setbacks, Russia decided to focus on covertly destabilizing the country through protests. In both coup plots, Russian intelligence designed protests to provoke a government reaction that would justify a violent response.
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These Russian covert operations are not just limited to Europe. Russian disinformation operatives worked to deepen American political divides during the recent campus demonstration over the war in Gaza. Worryingly, the open southern border has contributed to a large jump in illegal immigration by Russian nationals. Originally, 467 Russian nationals illegally immigrated in 2020, but that number jumped to 30,500 as of March 2023.
Overall, it is important to remember the Russian threat to the United States and its European allies is not only limited to the battlefields of Ukraine. Russian covert operations at home are also destabilizing the West and should be a prominent national security concern.