Christopher Walker
I’d like to welcome everyone. Thanks for taking the time to join us today. I’m Chris Walker, Vice President at the Center for European Policy Analysis, and we’re really pleased to be able to do what I think is an incredibly timely briefing, especially given the velocity and the trajectory of threshold attacks by Russia across Europe. These are increasing on an almost daily basis. What we’re talking about today is an outgrowth of work that CEPA has done over the last year, looking at these issues. There are two reports in particular that are forming the base of this. One of these was released at the end of last month. It was titled, “War Without End: Russia’s Shadow Warfare.” We have another report that we’re releasing today that focuses on why it’s critical to deter Russia before it’s too late, and we have the four principal contributors to these two reports. Very pleased that they could all join us today. We have Eitvydas Bajarūnas, who’s a senior fellow at CEPA, Irina Borogan, also a Senior Fellow, and Andrei Soldatov. All of our speakers are actually CEPA fellows, so it’s wonderful to have them with us, and Sam Greene as well, who’s a Senior Fellow with CEPA. So, I’m not going to say anything more; we’ll get right into it. I’m going to turn to Sam first, just to offer some observations on some of the larger issues we’ve seen, perhaps connected with the full-blown war in Ukraine and what we’re defining as shadow war. And then we can open up this discussion for conversation. I will also integrate, perhaps my own questions in, but welcome everyone who’s on the call to get my attention, either through a digital hand or a wave on the screen. So, Sam, over to you.
Sam Greene
Thanks, Chris, and thanks to all of you for being here. Thanks also to my co-conspirators in this project, Andrei, Irina, and Eitvydas. It’s been a privilege to work with you on this. It is topical and timely. I think, obviously, almost every day we are seeing headlines of exactly what Chris is describing. We’ve been working now within this team and a broader team that will continue to produce more reports on this over the next few months, really, to do a couple of things. One is to get a better grip on what it is that we’re seeing when talking about this as shadow warfare. I think we wanted to move a little bit out of what has become maybe a tired discussion about cyber warfare, about hybrid warfare, some of these other terms, which have a place. But we wanted to focus on the fact that Russia appears to be really concerted, since the advent of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2020, in pursuing a concerted, consistent, and coherent campaign of sub-threshold kinetic activity. Some of this is delivered digitally, some of this is delivered through human activity, some of this is delivered in the air, as we have seen, but the purpose is to cause physical harm, physical damage, and in some cases, death within Europe, within European NATO allies, and within the European Union. More broadly, the second purpose was to understand the role of this warfare and the war that Russia is pursuing in Ukraine, and the degree to which it understands the strategic nature of what it’s doing in this sort of shadow warfare, this subthreshold kinetic warfare, in the context of its objectives in Ukraine and its broader objectives, as we have seen with Europe. In doing that, and here is where Andrei and Irina have done spectacular work, we’ve tried to understand something about what the command and control structure is, what the strategic nature is within Russia, who was doing this, why they are doing that, and what they understand themselves to be achieving. That then feeds into the last part of this project, which is to understand what a strategy of deterrence would look like. I think if there’s one core argument that comes out of all of this from CEPA’s side, it is that we can no longer look at this as a law enforcement problem; we can no longer look at this as a nuisance; and we can no longer look at this as a disjointed series of challenges. This requires a concerted, allied response, not least, and I think we’ll talk about this in the discussion, in order to impose some discipline and indeed sharpen Russia’s sense of its own strategy in this phase, so that both sides avoid what could be potentially a catastrophic escalation that neither side is interested in.
Christopher Walker
Thank you very much for that, Sam. We welcome any questions from participants in this meeting; in the absence of that, I might turn to Andrei and Irina for any observations they want to share that follow on from Sam’s introduction.
Andrei Soldatov
Thank you for having us, Chris. I think we believe it’s an extremely important topic, and we need to focus more attention on that. Despite the fact that we have seen these kinetic force activities always continuing, we believe that it deserves more attention for one particular reason. We are, I think, in uncharted territory here. The problem is that, as a rule, Western intelligence, counterintelligence, and counter terrorism agencies tend to look for solutions; for instance, think about Russian activities and try to find examples in the Cold War, for absolutely obvious reasons, because everyone loves what they want. But the thing that makes the situation so different and so dangerous is that there are not templates to find in the Cold War if one wants to deal with and find a response to some of those activities because Soviet intelligence agencies had this option and paid disposal for many decades, but they never used it in Europe because they believed this option should be activated only in the time of hot war. That wise option was always there, but was not really activated. That is why there is no tradition; there are no temporary ideas on how to deal with this problem when this option was activated by Russian intelligence agencies. The second observation I think it’s important to make is that, of course, we all understand that the scale of Russian sabotage operations has significantly increased after the start of the full-scale invasion in 2022, but some groundwork was done by Russian intelligence agencies long before that. I would say we need to think about the period, at least, getting back to the period around the 2014 annexation of Crimea. That was the time when Russian military intelligence, in particular, went through some very, very dramatic reforms. As a result of that, because the agency was expanded, they got lots of new talent, and this talent came from Special Forces. So, in a way, we need to talk these days about these strange, mixed mindsets of Russian intelligence agencies, but also of Russian Special Forces. Of course, we all understand that special forces are very different from intelligence agencies. They conduct their operations very differently, mostly because Special Forces always assume that they are in a state of war. It’s not peacetime for them; it’s always wartime. I would say we all understand that for the Russian intelligence agencies, it’s not just a war in Ukraine and with Ukraine, but it is an existential war with the West, and we can talk about reasons why they’re thinking like that later. But, of course, when you and your agencies believe that you are in an existential war, it’s the mentality of the Special Forces of getting more and more and more important in decision-making and also in assessments of risks. We all understand that Special Forces do not care that much about the consequences of their operations as intelligence agencies do. Special Forces types just want to get things done, and here I would stop some of the strategies, which were used by Western agencies for many years as a way to deter Russian operations, for instance, naming and shaming when Russian agents were exposed and named and indicted by the West, they don’t work, as they worked, say, before 2022, and that makes things much more dangerous.
Irina Borogan
I’ve been talking a lot with journalists recently on this issue, on sabotage operations or hybrid warfare, and they often ask me, “Is there anything surprising to you?” Usually, I say, “No, because we have been writing about this for years and years and years.” This kind of attack that the Russian security services conducted in Europe and in the UK- a lot of them are from their textbook. But what is really surprising for me is the intensity of these operations and how often they happen. And the last thing that is surprising to me is that the West still doesn’t have any kind of proper response to this, because usually people suppose that the response should be symmetrical, but that’s not the case. You can’t start an operation on Russian soil, or organize arsons in the shopping malls, or kill people, or assassinate people across Russia. That’s not how democratic countries operate when they are not in a state of war with another country, but that’s what the Kremlin is doing, and it’s very tricky. That’s new.
Christopher Walker
And Irina, you make an important point, which is, perhaps, we don’t recognize that we’re actually pretty deep into a state of war, but you’ve made this observation as to how we can respond. I think this might be a good opportunity to turn to Eitvydas Bajarūnas for his observations on what steps we might take in this context. We do have some questions that I’ll get to as well that are in the chat, but let’s turn to Eitvydas first.
Eitvydas Bajarūnas
Thank you very much, and best regards from Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania. In my paper, which was released today and for which I am very thankful to my CEPA colleagues, they helped me streamline the Polish language, which was very helpful. I would not consider this paper academic. On the contrary, this is my initial idea, talking with CEPA colleagues and being part of this shadow warfare, to present a sort of compendium of practical menu items because I think Sam, who made the introductory remark, is right. We have talked so long about this shadow warfare, hybrid war, or whatever names we use; it’s already been here, it’s around us. Russia is actively using these methods and trying to destroy the fabric of the West, and trying to exacerbate the frictions in our societies, and in the long term, trying to destroy NATO and EU unity and the very democratic fabric of our societies. So, instead of talking, we should start considering how to act. Of course, what Irina and Andrei’s paper deals with is understanding the core source of this hybrid warfare, which is extremely important because, again, it’s changing. It still takes advantage of and draws on experience from the KGB in the Soviet period, but it’s developed with new methods. So my paper, as I said, was intended to move to another phase, which is even more important to be seen from my experience. I try to accumulate all my knowledge in my writing, first of all, from my knowledge as a security expert of Lithuania, and I’ve been dealing with NATO-EU issues for a long time. In 2016, I was the first among EU countries to be nominated by the Lithuanian Foreign Ministry as an ambassador for countering hybrid threats. So actually, my role was to travel to many Western capitals and to EU-NATO institutions, to explain what hybrid warfare is about. This was the period in 2016 when both NATO and the EU started to actively employ the term hybrid to describe Russian operations. But my experience from the Baltic and Nordic Eastern European region comes with quite a gloomy conclusion that understanding of hybrids is important and investing in resilience is also critical, be it your infrastructure resilience or societal media literacy, whatever aspects you will cover. But, only dealing with resilience – which, in strategic terms, is called deterrence by denial – you will still always be one step behind. The country instigator, which, in my paper, I take the example of Russia, which, of course, in the Baltic Sea region, is a major actor, of course, together with other actors like China and Belarus, but still the main actor. So, you are still one step behind Russia, so instead of always being late, what I am suggesting, which has already been explored in various academic papers, but also practical papers, is deterrence by punishment. You are sending a clear message to any penetrator that whatever you do will cost you; whatever action you implement, it will not go without being punished. That’s why this paper, which happens to be quite broad on understanding of what hybrid warfare is, what its phases are, and how we should deal with it. I’m concluding with a list of punitive measures, which I would suggest we should implement more rigorously now, especially when Russia is not even slowing down the implementation of these methods in Europe, in its vicinity, but it’s actually activating sabotage operations, like the Incursions or infringement in our elections and the kinetic aspects like cable cutting, which became even stronger and are, in a way, a continuation of Russia’s war in Ukraine. You should not divide Russia’s war against the West and Russia’s war against Ukraine. From the Russian perspective, it’s the same war. Russia is in a state of war with the West and with Ukraine, but there is a tragic difference because for our Ukrainian friends in Ukraine, this is the hot face of the war. The conventional war in Europe is still a hybrid war, but the nation is the same. “We are here, we Russians are here. You, the West, are in a state of war.” So, instead of waiting or contemplating, we should take steps to send the signal, the deterrence by punishment. So, this is, in essence, what I intended to write in this paper, which, again, thank you for this briefing, and I am eager to answer any specific questions.
Christopher Walker
Thank you very much, Eitvydas, and maybe following on this is a question that’s been posed by George Allison, relating to Ireland and its neutrality, which he says is often framed as a safeguard against confrontation, but now we see that military-grade drones are operating in Irish airspace during President Zelensky’s recent visit. What would be the most meaningful response, in this instance, to deter and prevent this from happening in the future? So, I’d maybe put this to Sam to start, and then we can turn to Eitvydas.
Sam Greene
It’s a great question. Obviously, it’s another piece of evidence as to why we’re doing this. I don’t want to get too far ahead of ourselves; we will have some very detailed work coming out in the not-too-distant future, looking specifically at both subsidy and onshore infrastructure and hardening that. I think a lot of the conclusions that we’re coming to point to the direction, obviously, of the necessity of taking this seriously, of understanding where the vulnerabilities are, and hardening them where possible. But actually, there’s a lot of emphasis on the policy front as well. One of the things I said at the outset was that a lot of the analysis is pointing in the direction of needing to move this out of law enforcement and out of the sort of policing sphere and into, where necessary and where feasible, a national security logic. That means shortening the timeframe that it takes for Western governments to go from recognition of whether there was an attack, to attribution: who did the attack, and what the implications of that attack are. In other words, the definition essentially is whether we are at war and whether it requires a national security response. Again, with a full spectrum of the kinds of activities that Eitvydas was just outlining at people’s disposal. What Russia is able to take advantage of is the structural gaps in that recognition, attribution, and definition process, which thus slows down the decision-making and allows these attacks to go without a systematic response. That’s Russia understanding that there are no breaks in its escalation. So, from my perspective, at least the question for both the UK and for Ireland isn’t so much, “Do you have the right capacity to keep your offshore and undersea infrastructure safe? Do you have the right capacity to keep your airport safe?” Obviously, that’s a technical analysis. It can be done. It is being done by NATO; it is being done by governments. I’m sure that the Irish are looking at this very closely at the moment, but the question is actually a political and a process question. Are we able to respond quickly enough to things that occur in order to make credible deterrent decisions?
Christopher Walker
So maybe a turn briefly to Eitvydas, and then I have a question from Elizaveta Folk that follows on this regarding attribution. I might come to Andrei and Irina at that point. Eitvydas, go ahead.
Eitvydas Bajarūnas
I’ll try to be brief, but I am about to be frank with you. So, I will say what you should do, and using the recent example of Lithuania, what you should not do. What you should do, and not to repeat what Sam has already said quite well, I would add from Lithuania’s perspective, if that were to happen, and this is happening very often in Lithuania, the first step to take is a very clear message from the government. “We follow this, we know this, we understand this, and we have the plan for how to deal with this.” This is critical because, whether it be conventional war or a hybrid war, if the government is in a long process of deliberating whether this was simply accidentally flying balloons or drones, you need to be very clear and sharp on what is happening. So, messaging needs to be clear, clear, clear, and the policy line from the government is crucial. The second step is the practical measures, so the same logic as I was previously alluding to: the first step is to strengthen resilience, whatever airport or your infrastructure, and the first step is also to coordinate all institutions because hybrids have this nature, where it involves law enforcement, environmental protection, airport security, and all other institutions. But if you are serious about implementing the punitive measures, I would use the recent example of Lithuania to show you what you should not do. As a response to quite a brutal balloon incursion in Lithuania’s airspace over the last few months, which impedes the safety of Vilnius airport, which is 30 kilometers from the Belarusian border. The balloons are impeding activities, especially after dark; many flights have been canceled, so the government decided to take punitive action against Belarus because we know these balloons have been used for so long as a way of smuggling cigarettes and other criminal activity, but the irregularity and the way it is done are definitely done with the consent of the Belarusian government. Lithuania’s decision nearly two weeks ago to close the Lithuania-Belarusian border, I think, was not a very well-implemented measure. The idea was fine; you’re sending a message and trying to make a punitive measure, but this was not done in coordination with our neighbors, Latvia and Poland, which puts Lukashenko in a very good situation for Belarusian trade with Europe. He might circumvent Lithuania, which makes the effect of your punitive measures quite nearly zero. But there was another point, which was made in an uncoordinated way with the Lithuanian lorry drivers. We have nearly 500 Lithuanian lorry drivers stuck on the Belarusian border, and they have become like prisoners of Lukashenko. This is also not to criticize the government, but this is to understand that whatever you do in countering this should be coordinated with your allies, you should coordinate with the neighbors, and you should have a very clear understanding of what effect you might have on your own economy, transport, and infrastructure. Do this not in harming your society, your drivers, your people. This is what I would say in this regard, about the flying of drones.
Christopher Walker
Thank you so much, I appreciate it. Maybe coming back to this issue of attribution, the question that was posed was how exactly the perpetrator, perhaps Russia, was pinpointed in each of these individual cases of shadow warfare? Is there a standard, uniform way to do investigations in order to have a clearer sense of who’s behind it? Andrei, Irina, do you want to share some observations on this?
Irina Borogan
I don’t think that there can be any kind of uniform attribution or uniform methods to understand who is behind the attack because attacks happen in different countries and the variety of them is huge, from arson to very complicated drone attacks; we don’t know how to respond now. Theoretically, Russia is behind most of these attacks, but it’s not the only actor. It can also be Belarus and other actors. China is active in this field, so it might be other actors. Every attack and every country should be investigated in its own way. The problem is that the security services of any country don’t like to share information. The Poles usually keep their information with them, the French are not eager to share this with Poland, and so far, so on. Right now, I see the vulnerability in this field, so it will be very, very fruitful to share information about the attacks and their investigation.
Andrei Soldatov
Just to give you one example, less than a year ago, there was a huge scandal in two European countries when a Russian military intelligence officer with a known record of fighting in Ukraine with Russian Special Forces was first asked to leave the country, very politely, and he left. Just a few months later, he was given a new assignment in another European country, and only after a huge investigation by local journalists did this information come to light. Apparently, there was no proper sharing of intelligence about people who actually serve in Russian embassies in these countries. I hope very much that the situation is changing, but apparently, there are still problems here.
Christopher Walker
And Eitvydas, do you want to add to this?
Eitvydas Bajarūnas
Yeah, just very briefly. This attribution is really a tricky issue. In 2018, when the Skripal family had this accident, being nearly poisoned, and EU-NATO countries started to discuss, “Who did this?” The British government, which was still part of the EU by the way, was in a very delicate situation because there was footage, there were fingerprints, and there was quite a lot of evidence leading to the two GRU operatives who were behind this. But, in one of the EU Council meetings, the British Prime Minister, Theresa May, was still coming to EU meetings, and she was asked by other EU colleagues, “Theresa, do you have legal evidence that this was GRU?” The trick is that if you go to the court, it might reject the case because there’s not enough evidence. So, Theresa May introduced the term very elegantly, which I know made many Russians, Minister Lavrov, and Putin very angry: “highly likely.” This term circumvented this legal, clear-cut evidence and said that this was the GRU. “Highly likely,” enough evidence to lead. But, because you should not only go with this legalistic term, because who will be interested in poisoning people, who has the benefits, and so on, so you put this in the whole package, and you use this term “highly likely,” which I very much appreciate, this traditional British elegance to use the term.
Christopher Walker
Thank you, thank you for that. Let’s turn to another question. This is from Ivana Kotatsova, relating to whether our contributors believe that society in Europe understands the current reality and is prepared for a potential escalation, and how this plays into thinking about investments in defense and the tradeoffs that might be perceived between, say, security and defense on the one hand and welfare and Social Security on the other. So, maybe Sam, if you’re willing to take that one.
Sam Greene
I think that Eitvydas may have a clearer view of that, having engaged in these policy debates directly in Lithuania and more broadly, in the European Union. I think the short answer is, it depends on which societies you’re talking about, in that there are countries that have been much more closely and directly exposed to this than others, and that have also historically invested in resilience. We often talk about social resilience in terms of cognitive resilience and things like that, but there has also been, particularly in the Baltics and the Nordics, a lot of investment in physical resilience, and that is, I think, relatively well understood. We have seen, increasingly, governments- Germany, France, others, the UK, Denmark as well- talking about the necessity of these sorts of investments, and the European Commission has begun talking about it more directly. NATO has begun talking about it. I think that I’m not seeing what I would consider to be pushback. I think that people are spooked, particularly as this becomes more vulnerable and more visible, that we see drones outside airports, and I think that there is a growing sense that it is probably a matter of time before one of these drones brings down an airliner, probably by accident, but nobody is interested in seeing that happen. I think that there is an indication that societies are willing to have this conversation, but I think that we are also seeing governments that are still not quite confident enough to have that conversation with their publics, and that’s part of the reason why we also run into this challenge of not only recognizing and attributing an attack, but then defining it as an act of warfare one way or another. Politicians are nervous, and not without good reason, about communicating to their populations that there is, in fact, an act of war.
Christopher Walker
Thank you for that, Sam, and so Eitvydas, maybe, if you want to add from your own political experience, and maybe talk a little bit about the threat perception as you see it in Europe, because that will shape constituencies’ willingness to invest one way or another, I suspect.
Eitvydas Bajarūnas
As I mentioned, in 2016, when I was nominated to this role as the Lithuanian Counter Hybrid Threats Ambassador, and if I were to go to distant capitals with all my sympathies to Lisbon and Madrid as examples, the understanding was that, “Okay, something is happening in your countries, guys, we understand.” We know Russia was using these hybrid methods quite elegantly to annex Crimea and continue the war in eastern Ukraine, which was not yet in an intensive phase. So, the understanding was, “We know, guys, you do very well,” but then we talk about mainly disinformation, meddling in elections, more on the sort of softer line. The more Russia was aggressive, the more it was using sabotage, kinetic techniques, the more understanding was coming to even distant EU countries. So, if you go to Lisbon and Madrid now, they would have quite a strong understanding because even the Spanish have referenced 2018 when in Catalonia, in Barcelona, there was a big manifestation, and Russia was using Spanish-speaking social media to show that there was police brutality and bloodshed. This was not the case. So the Spanish, even from their own example, know this. The more Russia presses, the more understanding is coming, even to the capitals, which have been diplomatically sympathetic to Russia. The result of this is that, especially with what’s happening, there are dramatic changes in thinking in Europe. Five years ago, to talk about European defense and the European Union, which is a political and economic institution, taking initiatives on defense was unimaginable. Now, there is a European Commissioner, actually, the former prime minister of Lithuania, Andrius Kubilius. The European Union is planning to invest billions of euros over the next few years in defense, not in support of NATO and American presence, but in support. Why? Because everyone understood that, without investing in both defense and resilience, we would not be able to continue the post-World War II phase of Europe being at peace anymore. Being at peace, with American backing, this is over. We, as Europe, need to invest. It would be very ironic to say that Mr. Putin contributed well to the European understanding of the threats and the need to invest in defense and resilience. So, day and night, from 2016 to now. In Europe, you read in the media, and you talk with the people. You meet businesspeople. I go to Brussels every week, and I talk with businesspeople. Everyone understands this because this became part of the, unfortunately, normality in our countries. We do not yet have a full-fledged understanding of Russia’s warfare. That’s why a paper like this is important; writing and articles about this are important, but we are already in quite good shape compared to 2016.
Christopher Walker
Great, thank you, Eitvydas, and let’s turn to Andrei and Irina.
Andrei Soldatov
Just one thing, which I think is quite important is that, there were several mistakes made in recent years, for instance, for many years the European public and the public in the West was told repeatedly about the incompetence and sloppiness of Russian agents, and that led to an understanding that actually these guys were not really competent, not really professional, and therefore, they do not pose a serious threat. I think it was a complete mistake because you need a different kind of engine for a different kind of work. If you want to infiltrate a Western society or establishment, you need one kind of agent, but if you just need to organize an arson attack in the UK, for that you need a different kind of agent and they don’t necessarily need to be that well-trained, especially if this is a Kremlin response to the naming and shaming policy, to show that the country has enough operatives who are not afraid of being caught and exposed. That’s exactly what the Russian tactics were. And, all of a sudden, after this period of time when people were told that, “Look, these guys were completely incompetent,” all of a sudden, after 2022, the same people started saying that, “Look, actually it is a big threat.” That led to absolutely understandable cautiousness. Nowadays, we know that many Europeans think, well, “Why, all of a sudden, do we need to trust you when you tell us that Russian intelligence agencies weren’t competent or professional, and now they pose a great threat?” And again, that leads to many mistakes, including emotional ones. For instance, I see a question about Schengen visas, and of course, it’s just a manifestation of such an emotional response. Many European countries understand, and governments understand, that they need to do something about that. They understand that there is an emotional attitude to this problem among the constituents, and they believe they need to respond urgently to this demand, and the way they respond is, unfortunately, not very efficient. Answering the question about Schengen visas, it has nothing to do with deterring Russia. We all understand that, for instance, if you need to understand something about the country, I mean Russia, you need to be able to communicate with people who are still there. For that, you need to get people out of the country, and you need to have the means to talk to them. That goes for many categories of Russians who are still there and who are still fighting covertly and constantly, not openly. They have lots of knowledge that people in the West urgently need. That is why, no, we don’t think it was a really good idea to impose this ban on Schengen visas.
Irina Borogan
To sum up what Andrei was talking about, the last, most successful operations, or just operations organized by the Russian Security Services, were not conducted by Russians with Schengen visas. They were conducted by local people with Bulgarian passports, with British passports, with Ukrainian passports, who were simply hired via social media, recruited via social media, via the internet, for a very cheap cost. This cheap cost is a clue. You can do this every day, and it costs nothing for the security services, and you don’t have a lot to lose.
Eitvydas Bajarūnas
I think that Irina and Andrei are right in the last message that the very sort of idea that the Russians are recruiting, for example, Ukrainians, or the guys with Ukrainian passports, is testimony for me of two things. One is that we, the collective West, have already done quite well to restrict Russia’s GRU activities in our countries, which is okay. This is already the first signal that we are making good moves. But the very way, as Irina concluded, that Russians can use the Telegram social media platform to recruit other nationalities to conduct on their behalf, is that there are so many other methods Russia can trigger, and that’s why we should not think that everything is done. We are simply now facing the changing nature of various clandestine and sabotage operations, and this is probably the conclusion that we should make. While Russia is developing and changing, we should also change the way how we should respond.
Christopher Walker
Critical point on how the malign activity is evolving and adapting, and we’re obliged to do the same. There are a couple of other questions. I might integrate them and get responses from our speakers, and then we’ll work towards a conclusion, and I’ll hand it off to my colleague, Sarah. So, this is a little bit of a historical question in recent history, from Rebecca Henries, and that is this idea that, given the lack of a strong response going back years ago, to the Novichok attack and Mr. Litvinenko poisoning, the response was slow on those counts. Is there a sense that we lost too much ground to catch up from those kinds of examples? Andrei and Irina, do you want to start?
Andrei Soldatov
Well, it’s never too late because, to be honest, we have no choice but to try to find a way back and to fight back. But we need to admit that the situation is really, really serious, that these days we are in a situation where we have free Russian agencies. Sometimes we have other government organizations helping Russian intelligence agencies in conducting sabotage operations, unfortunately, because of a lack of a proper response. Moscow’s party masters believe that it’s such a good thing, and also purely for geopolitical reasons these days, when lots of people in Moscow believe that they might reach some sort of deal with the United States, the weakest point, of course, in their eyes, is Europe, and unfortunately, it makes Europe a very big target.
Christopher Walker
Thank you. Eitvydas, do you want to add to this briefly?
Eitvydas Bajarūnas
I would not be as dramatic as to say that we lost time. Of course, from a Lithuanian, Eastern European point of view, it would have been much better to already see tough European and NATO measures implemented against Russia’s hybrid activities in 2016 and 2017. But, again, this was the reality. The reality was that the political class and political sort of strategic thinking were not enough to reach this. Unfortunately, sometimes it’s better that this is a very natural way of maturity. Now, as I said, we have the European Union investing in our defense, which was unimaginable. So, we are moving in a good direction. It would have been better to start this earlier, but we are where we should be. What is most important, not just to regret what we haven’t done, I think the most important thing is to continue to send signals. We know what Russia is doing, we are ready to respond, and we will not let Russia go unpunished. I think, instead of being regretful, I think the time is now to start sending this message.
Christopher Walker
Thank you, Eitvydas, and Sebastian has posed a question on where we draw the line on what should be considered shadow warfare, and maybe Sam, you want to take a crack at that?
Sam Greene
Yeah, I think it’s an important question, and I’ll begin to answer it by picking up on the last question. I think it is important to understand that although the tactics are similar when we’re looking at an attack, for example, on Litvinenko or even on Skripal, and we did just have the inquiry published today here in the UK on Salisbury, that it was and it is a very different phenomenon overall because of the strategic nature of what is being done now under the rubric of what we’re calling shadow warfare. In other words, in earlier phases, again, going back to Litvinenko and even Skripal, I would argue, Russia felt empowered and enabled, obviously, to pursue its objectives abroad. But the process, the strategy, the warfare that Russia is pursuing now is not just taking place on Western territory; it is directly, amongst others, aimed at the West. It is aimed at achieving a diminution of Western ability and willingness to support Ukraine, of European of Europe’s ability and willingness to construct its own deterrence vis a vis Russia, of demobilizing and demotivating Europe as a security actor, of beginning to undo all of the progress that Eitvydas was just referring to, and communicating to Europeans that it might be a better idea if you sought a more conciliatory relationship towards Russia and its geopolitical objectives. In that respect, it is different than, I think, anything we have seen before 2022 because of the concerted nature of it and its contiguousness with everything that Russia is doing in the military sphere. This is one of the key findings and pieces of analysis in what Andrei and Irina wrote, in particular, that the Russian system does not differentiate between warfare in Ukraine, securing the regime at home, securing the regime abroad, and conducting various kinds of sub-threshold kinetic warfare in Europe. Now, to Sebastian’s question about where we draw the line and what’s included in the concept, we did specifically want to refer to this as shadow warfare in order to distinguish it from operations that are purely in the information space. Operations that are purely in the information space are there, they are important, they’ve been going on for a very long time, and they do feed into this and they can, importantly, feed on this because the narratives about what Russia is doing, why it’s a threat, why it’s impossible for Europe to do anything about it, are part of the strategy. But the response here, I think, is different. The reason for the West and for Europe to harden itself and to develop a deterrent response is to prevent unintended escalation from turning into a catastrophic military conflagration, to impose discipline on Russia from that perspective, whereas the purpose of countering information operations, like Sebastian the ones you’re describing, is to certainly solidify Western cohesion and the ability to make decisions and to pursue strategy and policy, but the means are inherently different. Europe is not going to stop being a democratic space; it’s not going to start censoring media, and it should not stop people and information from moving freely across borders. Otherwise, what exactly is it that we are defending? So, at the end of the day, it’s a different kind of resilience. It’s a different kind of strategy. It is something that you need to think about; it is something that governments need to think about. I’m not sure it’s something that NATO needs to think about, but it is a different kind of conflict, and I think that we complicate things for decision-makers if we conflate what fundamentally different kinds of aggression are.
Christopher Walker
Thank you for those really crucial points, Sam. I’d like to just offer, really briefly, Andrei, Irina, or Eitvydas, last comments before we wrap up. Should they wish? Go ahead, Andrei, why don’t you start?
Andrei Soldatov
I just wanted to underline that it’s not by accident, but we mentioned Litvinenko and Skripal, which on the surface were not sabotage attacks, but TNR, transnational repression attacks, against Russian citizens who defected to the West. Unfortunately, what we see increasingly is that two tactics- attacks on political immigration, TNR, and sabotage- are going hand in hand, and we discovered that in many, many cases, literally the same departments, the same people, are in charge of these operations, and that makes things much more dangerous. I don’t want to leave you completely depressed, but we need to remember that these days, 40 countries conduct TNR operations across the world, and we need to understand that if we do not find the proper answer to what Russia is doing, some other countries with interesting regimes might pick up this example and say, “Okay, actually, it might be interesting. We can try it.”
Irina Borogan
And, we have to keep in mind that the ultimate goal of all these methods, all this hybrid war, is to intimidate the population in European countries, in order to undermine the support of Ukraine, and the idea to intimidate populations in order to make them change their minds and in the next elections, put pressure on the new authorities and that they should just make some decisions in favor of Russia, so that’s the ultimate goal. The Kremlin does not create new problems; it just exploits already existing vulnerabilities in European countries and in the West.
Christopher Walker
Worth noting that China is also using its own version of these integrated warfare techniques, which are a huge burden and challenge to all of our open societies. So, Eitvydas, maybe you can just say a brief final word, and then we’ll bring things to a conclusion.
Eitvydas Bajarūnas
I have actually prepared two messages to finalize, but one has already been taken care of by Sam. The credibility of our signals sent to Russia, to Moscow, should definitely be combined with political sustainability, the democratic nature of our response, and the legitimate nature of our response. This is, I think, crucial. We should not be sending the signals, even to our society, that we are eager to conduct illegal activities against Russia. This is, I think, the bottom line for EU-NATO countries. The second is, just very briefly, if you take the last 28 points, whatever was presented by Americans, Russians, or in combination, and the European way to jump into this debate and to support Ukraine in changing these points, which were quite nasty towards Ukraine and towards Europe. So, if you are Putin, you’re thinking, “Trump is okay. We can deal with this. We can still squeeze and push Ukraine, but we should deal with Europe. Europe is our biggest enemy,” and that’s why the only conclusion I can make as an expert is that there will be more clandestine operations. There will be more pressure on Europe from Russia. There will be more ways to show from Moscow that “You bastard Europeans, don’t infringe on my ideal peace plans at any time in the future.” So, this is why we should be watchful over what is coming next. Thank you.
Christopher Walker
Thank you for that, Eitvydas, and I’d like to really express my thanks to everyone for joining us, and Eitvydas, Sam, Andrei, and Irina, for all the great work. I really appreciate this incredibly timely and insightful work. And now I’d like to hand this over to my colleague, Sarah Krajewski.
Sarah Krajewski
Thank you so much, Chris, and thank you to our panelists, as always, for providing their expertise and these timely reports. Thank you for all your questions. If any of them haven’t been answered, feel free to reach out to press@cepaorg.pages.dev, and I will gladly connect you with any of the experts on this call. Otherwise, a recording and auto-generated transcript will be coming your way later today, followed by a full transcript that will be on our website in the weeks to follow. If you have any other questions or want to keep up to date on all of this important work, which we will continue to publish, please contact us at press@cepaorg.pages.dev. Thank you so much, and enjoy the rest of your day wherever it takes you. Bye, everyone.
