Some European countries are afraid to recognize the scale of Russian subversive operations, according to the witnesses heard by the US Helsinki Commission.
NATO countries are still trying to avoid confrontation with Russia by not providing Ukraine with long-range weapons, explaining that this could lead to an open conflict between the Western bloc and Moscow. However, a number of political scientists, journalists, and military experts point out that Russia is already waging a covert war against NATO, and the alliance itself does not yet realize it, Voice of America wrote.
Experts and US lawmakers debated at a Helsinki Commission hearing in the US Congress on Tuesday, September 24 (video), how to combat Russia’s subversive operations in the West, how to resist Russia’s blackmail over Ukraine, and how to stop a “genocidal Russian invasion of Ukraine.”
Weiss calls Russian subversive operations on EU territory ‘a war’
Michael Weiss, an American investigative journalist specializing in Russia who has worked for numerous influential publications and currently serves as the editor of The Insider, a Russian investigative media, asserts that there is no hidden aspect to Russia’s actions against the West.
Weiss is convinced that “what Russia has been doing on NATO and EU territory for the last 20 years is war.” He cites dozens of examples of subversive operations carried out by Russian agents abroad: assassinations, poisonings, bombings, election interference, and sabotage.
He notes that the Kremlin does not hide those who are considered criminals in the West, but rather promotes them up the career ladder, gives them high positions in the Russian government, and even rewards them with diplomatic positions.
According to Weiss, Ukraine has always been at the center of these Russian efforts, and it began not in 2022 with the start of full-scale aggression, nor in 2014 when Russia seized Crimea, but back in 2011 when Russia began preparing an attack on Ukraine.
He recalled the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko in London by FSB officers, one of whom was later elected to the Russian State Duma. This is the GRU military intelligence unit 29155. Law enforcement officials claim that they destroyed weapons depots in Bulgaria (2011) and the Czech Republic (2014), targeting Ukraine and Georgia. And later, they poisoned a weapons manufacturer with Novichok, which was later used against Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury, UK.
As many European countries have imposed sanctions on Russian citizens and restricted their travel, expelling many spies who were operating under the cover of embassies, it has become more difficult for GRU agents to conduct operations in Europe. Therefore, according to Weiss, Russia is increasingly recruiting citizens of NATO countries remotely through social media who are willing to act against their countries for minimal compensation.
Weiss: Some governments are afraid to reveal the extent of Russian subversive operations
The journalist, who has also gained experience in the Middle East, asserts that non-state terrorist organizations like ISIS employ this tactic. Setting fire to a supermarket in Warsaw, an IKEA warehouse in Vilnius, or a bus station in the Czech Republic can cost as little as 400 euros, which the perpetrator, many of whom are teenagers, will receive in cryptocurrency, Weiss says.
Based on these and a number of other facts, Weiss says that despite their number, these operations are nothing new—the Soviet Union has been doing this since its founding in an effort to undermine European states. Only the technology has changed, the expert says. He believes that the West lacks full awareness of these threats, largely due to the non-disclosure of all operations.
“The frightening thing is not that we know what they have done, but that we know they have done it—murders, arson, bombings, sabotage operations that have yet to be documented,” Weiss said.
Responding to a question from Senator Tina Smith of Minnesota about how Russia is influencing public opinion in the West to reduce support for Ukraine, Weiss said that some governments are afraid to reveal the true extent of these operations to their populations, lest they scare the Western public with threats to themselves.
According to Weiss, recent government revelations, including that Russia is acting through American citizens, will have a positive impact on countering Russian influence in the election.
Schmitt: Energy is Russia’s weapon against the West
Benjamin Schmitt, former State Department adviser for European energy security, said that before the war against Ukraine, and especially its current phase with Russia’s attempts to destroy the country’s energy system, few in the West realized the extent to which energy is Russia’s weapon against the West.
A senior fellow at the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy at the University of Pennsylvania, he says he is leading a project that examines how Russia is already undermining the EU’s energy system now and what it plans to do in the future.
In particular, he says that one of the cases his team is studying was the rupture of an undersea fiber optic cable near a Norwegian island near the North Pole in January 2022.
A Russian fishing trawler was passing by Svalbard Island, which Russians call Spitsbergen, when it allegedly damaged an underwater fiber optic cable connecting the island to the mainland and transmitted important satellite data that Ukraine needed after Russia attacked it in February of that year. After the investigation, Norwegian police said that it was human interference and most likely an act of sabotage.
“It is likely that a Russian fishing trawler is responsible for severing a vital undersea fiber optic cable that was transmitting commercial satellite data from a ground station to the European mainland, commercial data that will prove critical to Ukraine’s defense in just a few weeks,” Schmitt said, adding that the incident also underscores the Kremlin’s revised maritime doctrine of using so-called commercial or research vessels to spy and sabotage off European shores.
Schmitt also mentioned other cases he has studied, including the October 2023 bombing of the Balticconnector gas pipeline connecting Finland and Estonia. At that time, a Russian ship flying a Chinese flag and accompanied by a nuclear icebreaker was also present at the site of the rupture, pulling anchor for several kilometers to sever telecommunications cables and damage the gas pipeline.
In the latest incident, observers spotted military drones near the Brunsbüttel industrial park in Germany. This park includes a liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal that was connected to the grid in early 2023, following Germany’s decision to stop purchasing Russian gas through pipelines due to the Russian war in Ukraine.
Schmitt: Russian acts of sabotage require retaliatory action by NATO
The researcher says that these cases are only the most prominent among dozens of other acts of sabotage suspected by the Russian regime, which, according to Schmitt, require retaliatory action by NATO.
He is convinced that Congress should support the action proposal to stop Moscow’s destructive actions and send a message that there will never be a return to “business as usual.”
First, NATO countries should invoke Article 4 of the NATO treaty, which allows for consultations to respond to acts of sabotage by Russia or conducted at its behest.
In addition, a former State Department official believes that Congress should prohibit U.S. government officials from working for Russian energy companies after leaving government service.
Finally, Congress should support authorizing Ukraine to use long-range weapons to prevent the destruction of Ukrainian infrastructure, he says.
In response to a question from Senator Emanuel Cleaver, a Democrat from Missouri, about whether such assistance would not lead to Russian attacks on NATO countries, Schmitt replied that the Ukrainians have long since crossed all imaginary red lines and that delaying authorization to defend themselves only leads to more loss and destruction in Ukraine.
