What is hybrid warfare?

Russia is accused of waging sophisticated hybrid warfare operations targetting European countries. Photo: Reuters

In the span of one week, a cargo plane belonging to German logistics company DHL crashed in Lithuania, two underwater data cables were damaged in the Baltic Sea and pro-Russian right-wing extremist Calin Georgescu surprisingly won the first round of Romania's presidential election.

Several Western politicians and intelligence agencies suspect that Russia was the driving force behind all three incidents, although nothing has been proven and no evidence backing the suspicions has so far been made public. 

While Kremlin-orchestrated hybrid warfare has always posed a danger, experts now warn that this danger has grown dramatically since Russia's 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Hybrid warfare means broadening military operations to include espionage, sabotage and cyberattacks, as well as engaging in election interference, propaganda or disinformation campaigns to weaken and destabilise the enemy from within. 

Experts say Russia has continuously expanded its hybrid warfare arsenal in recent years.

Espionage

European countries have expelled around 500 Russian diplomats since early 2022. Britain's MI5 secret service said at least 400 of them are spies. Many Russian embassies and consulates are reported to be equipped with state-of-the-art communications and espionage technology. 

If any of this can be definitively proven, Western intelligence agencies have chosen not to make public the information they may have gathered. After all, the embassy and consulate buildings are considered Russian territory and cannot be entered by host states without Russian permission.

The Dutch secret service has warned that Russia is equipping its spies with false papers and smuggling them into Western institutions disguised as businesspeople.

Reports of suspected Russian espionage emerge regularly. Some drew attention to a hacked conversation between German army officials discussing the country's Taurus missile system. Others have dealt with suspected Russian drones spying on European air bases and industrial zones. 

Some reports have also focused on suspected spy ships, officially classed as research vessels, cruising the seas of northern Europe and mapping critical seabed infrastructure for possible acts of sabotage.

Sabotage

Last week, a Russian-captained Chinese freighter reportedly damaged two undersea cables by dragging an anchor over the seabed. The incident is similar to one that occurred in October 2023. Last month, a London warehouse used for storing aid for Ukraine was hit by an arson attack. In July, a parcel that should have been sent by air freight went up in flames at a DHL logistics centre in Leipzig, Germany. 

It is thought Russian sabotage could have been at play in these and numerous other cases. Yet nothing has been proven so far.

European intelligence services warn that the number of acts of sabotage and arson have increased dramatically over the past year in the EU and UK.

Cyberattacks

Germany's Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) warns that the risk of malicious cyberspace activity is "higher than ever." Online espionage and sabotage are ever-present. "Before Russia's attack on Ukraine, Russian-linked groups were very active in Germany engaging in cyberespionage and financially motivated ransomware attacks," the BSI said. "The scope of threats has expanded since Russia launched its war of aggression against Ukraine."

The agency said "the number of DDoS attacks by pro-Russian hacktivists" has risen sharply. DDoS attacks involve flooding websites or servers with traffic until they crash due to overload. Hacks aimed at penetrating company and institutional networks are also on the rise.

Disinformation and propaganda

Another objective of hybrid warfare is trying to influence public opinion in a given target country. Falsehoods and pro-Russian or anti-Ukrainian narratives are disseminated to this end, whether on social media platforms through troll factories, or via Russian foreign media outlets.

In early 2024, Germany's Foreign Ministry uncovered a Russian "Doppelganger" disinformation campaign. It involved 50,000 fake social media user accounts spreading falsehoods and pro-Russian opinions on social networks while linking to fake news outlets spreading Russian propaganda. Some of the sites appeared deceptively similar to well-known news sites.

Election interference, meddling in the political process

One of the aims of these disinformation campaigns is to undermine public support for Ukraine. Another objective consists of politically destabilising a democratic target country by strengthening extreme parties and candidates, for example by providing financial support to them.

In April, the Czech secret service uncovered a propaganda website called Voice of Europe, believed to be financed by Moscow. The site is suspected of paying bribes to some members of the European Parliament.

One of the individuals suspected of having received such payments is Petr Bystron, an MEP with the far-right populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party. He has denied the accusations.

Western intelligence agencies also accused Russia of directly or indirectly influencing dozens of elections across Europe, North America and South America. Russian international broadcaster RT is said to have produced videos on controversial topics such as aid for Ukraine, migration and the economy during the US presidential election campaign. Right-wing US bloggers then spread some of the videos.

Hack-and-leak attacks are also part of the hybrid warfare repertoire. They involve hacking politicians, political parties or other institutions to steal and publish confidential information, sometimes alongside falsified documents, before elections. This happened, for example, in the run-up to the 2016 US election and the 2017 French presidential election.

Targeted killings

Assassinating influential figures is another facet of hybrid warfare. Russian President Vladimir Putin has not shied away from attacking individuals abroad. This is clear from the killing of a Chechen ex-commander in Berlin's Tiergarten Park, who allegedly fought against Russia during the Second Chechen War. This is also evident from the 2006 attack on Kremlin critic Alexander Litvinenko and the assassination attempt against Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in 2018. All were carried out on British soil.

It's mainly Russian citizens who have fallen victim to such attacks so far. In July 2024, however, news leaked that Russia was planning to assassinate Armin Papperger, CEO of the German armaments group Rheinmetall, which manufactures the Leopard II tanks and other munitions supplied to Ukraine. The Kremlin has denied all the accusations.

How to deal with hybrid warfare?

Russia is conducting many different hybrid warfare pinpricks across Europe, according to Sönke Marahrens, a German army officer and hybrid security expert.

"Russian operators are trying out different things in many European states, which are individually tailored to the respective state," Marahrens told German public news outlet tagesschau.de. "Hybrid measures that work in Poland don't work in Germany; what works in Germany wouldn't work in Finland."

That is why, he said, one must expect "a very broad spectrum of attacks in the future." Likewise, one should show flexibility in reacting to such attacks, he added.

Sketch: TBS

Thomas Latschan is a journalist at DW.

Disclaimer: This opinion first appeared on DW, and is published by special syndication arrangement.