There are ample signs that “Russia’s secret war in Europe” is intensifying. This is what we read in the British weekly “The Economist” which retraces some of the events of recent weeks starting from the fire in the Diehl Metall metallurgical plant in the Berlin suburb of Lichterfelde. The plant stored sulfuric acid and copper cyanide, two chemicals that can combine dangerously in the event of a fire. Although the police have not yet spoken openly about an act of sabotage, some doubts have been raised by the fact that Diehl’s parent company produces the Iris-t air defense system, which Ukraine uses to defend itself from Russian missiles. In April, «The Economist» recalls, alleged pro-Russian saboteurs were arrested throughout the continent.
In Germany, where two people with dual German-Russian citizenship are suspected of planning attacks on U.S. military facilities and other targets on behalf of the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence agency; in Poland, where a man was apparently about to transmit information to the GRU about Rzeszow airport, the main hub for the delivery of military aid to Ukraine; in the United Kingdom, where several men were accused of starting an arson attack on a Ukrainian-owned logistics company in London. Furthermore, in the Baltic states, direct accusations were made against Russian secret services who allegedly used intermediaries to attack properties and deface monuments. Although these acts are nothing new, according to some European sources of the British weekly, the GRU has been given a mandate – and injected funding – for what Russia calls “active measures”.
Furthermore, on May 2, NATO published a statement describing these incidents as “part of a campaign of intensified activity” which includes “sabotage, acts of violence, computer and electronic interference, disinformation campaigns and other hybrid operations”. . According to «The Economist», Russian cyber operations have also become bolder. A report released last April by Google-owned cybersecurity division Mandiant found that groups of hackers with apparent ties to GRU had credibly boasted of having manipulated water utility control systems in the United States and in Poland, and of what information pirates believed to be a hydroelectric plant in France. According to some experts, such acts of sabotage are designed to “fray the nerves of Europe and instill caution through fear”, although there is no shortage of those who fear that these facts are only the preamble to a more serious aggression. “The most disturbing thing,” said Keir Giles, an analyst at the London-based research center Chatham House, is that these “behavior patterns correspond to predictions about what Russia would try to do before an open conflict with NATO.”
