Thread by @minna_alander

Europe has recently woken up to the threat posed by Russian hybrid warfare aiming to weaken the West by different means below the threshold of armed conflict, such as sabotage and GPS jamming.

However, the phenomenon is far from new. A detailed thread:
frivarld.se/rapporter/trac…

Russia has been cultivating its hybrid toolbox over the past decade(s) with almost no consequences, as European countries have been reluctant to attribute even blatant cases for the sake of “good relations” until Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine 2022.

The Nordic-Baltic region, due to geographical proximity, has been subjected to Russian interference to a particularly high degree - even to the point where GPS jamming and air space violations have become everyday occurrences and tolerated as such.

In this report, we collected 8 (by no means exhaustive) examples of Russian hybrid tactics in each Nordic and Baltic country and highlighted the difficulties for our open, free and democratic societies to respond effectively.

Some best of:

In Denmark and Sweden, a pro-Russian hacker group pretending to be a Sudanese wing of Anonymous targeted critical infrastructure & government institutions with large-scale DDoS attacks, allegedly to punish them for the Quran burnings that complicated Sweden’s NATO accession.

In Latvia, two Russian pranksters, Vovan and Lexus, managed to fool a number of government officials in 2021, pretending to be the Russian dissident Leonid Volkov. Danish, Swedish and Norwegian officials and ministers later fell victims to the same pranksters.

In Finland, over the past decades Russian citizens have been buying property - often allegedly for tourism businesses that never materialised - close to strategic locations, such as military bases, data masts, or in the archipelago along important sea lines.

A recent similar example was from northern Norway, where the Swedish defence forces had rented cabins owned by Russian oligarchs close to the Kremlin - overlooking the military air base of Bardufoss.

“Holiday homes with a view” seems to be a Russian preference.

In Estonia, saboteurs linked to Russian special services have recently vandalised a minister’s and a journalist’s cars and similar attacks have been conducted in Lithuania on statues of Lithuanian partisans who fought against the Soviet occupation.

On the Arctic island Svalbard, which belongs to Norway, Russia has started increasingly to poke around with paramilitary parades, “fishermen” wearing military uniforms, and the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) asserting claims on “Russianness”.

Indeed, nothing is holy to Russia, as it has frequently used the ROC to build churches conveniently close to military bases e.g. in Sweden and Norway - sometimes funded by Rosatom. The churches may also have a “dual use” character in money laundering schemes, among other things.

Recently, we can observe an increasing boldness and audacity in Russia’s hybrid strategy, such as the shifting of maritime border markers in the Baltic Sea. To effectively counter these attacks, European countries need far better coordination and situational awareness.

There are clear patterns in Russian tactics and identifying them is a first step in establishing effective countermeasures. Therefore, we recommend:

1) attribution: whenever feasible and appropriate, clearly inform the public who is behind such attacks.

2) establishing deterrence also in the hybrid sphere: both by punishment (effective countermeasures) and ultimately, by denial, by making societies sufficiently resilient in the information, infrastructure, legal etc fields and thereby rendering attacks ineffective.

We therefore propose to establish a mechanism in the NB8 format that would facilitate information sharing, even an early warning system, and consultations in case of an attack on one or several countries. The best practices could then be scaled to a European level. (End)