April 8, 2025: Incidents of Russian sabotage are increasingly occurring in Europe. One recent incident involved metal shavings found in an engine component of a new German corvette. The shavings were discovered and removed before they could do any damage. Russia is believed behind multiple sabotage incidents in the last year. Russia, unable to subdue Ukraine with military force, concluded that the most vulnerable aspect of the Ukrainian war effort was the support received from NATO countries. For over a year Russia has been attacking NATO nations clandestinely with disinformation and sabotage using a combination of specialized diplomats and sleeper agents who have long been living in Europe. The sleeper agents usually don’t carry out the sabotage themselves but hire criminal networks in Europe to do it.

European police and security agencies were aware of these plans and, when these sabotage activities were detected, the criminals were sought and some were arrested. Some of these men confirmed the Russian source of these attacks. With these Russian efforts no longer secret, Russian recruiting efforts were crippled, but not halted, because of fears that anyone who worked for Russia would be quickly identified and arrested. Since Russia invaded Ukraine, public opinion in Europe has been hostile to Russia. Undeterred, the Russian sleepers faded deeper into the background and used one or more levels of intermediaries to identify criminal groups who were willing to carry out the sabotage if the financial rewards were high enough.

There have been a few railway accidents that are now being reexamined to see if they were acts of sabotage. Russian jamming of GPS signals continues to be a problem in several European countries. Russia denies any involvement but the evidence of Russian complicity grows with each incident. In this respect Russia is at war with European nations and these attacks have led to economic sanctions against Russia. Russia sees this as an attack on their economy and their sleeper coordinated sabotage campaign in Western Europe is their response.

Russia had sleeper agents in Ukraine since the 1990s, after Ukraine became an independent state in 1991. The sleepers were not fully activated until Russia realized their 2022 invasion was faltering. There was no public announcement of this but by 2024 the Ukrainian security service, or SSU, detected several Russian agents operating in Kherson, which is near the Black Sea northwest of Crimea. Three Russian spies were arrested and apparently none of these men admitted to being sleepers or knowing anything about sleepers. That was not unusual, as sleepers and the agents they hire locally know that as long as they disclose nothing, Russia will do whatever they can to free these loyal agents.

Russia believes that conventional warfare waged in Ukraine and the unconventional warfare carried out worldwide complement each other. Russian efforts to destabilize Africa are supposed to divert attention and resources headed to Ukraine. To make this happen, Russian spies, assassins, and propagandists continue their efforts.

Revolution and subversion efforts worldwide have long been used by the Soviet Union and later Russia to exploit whatever opportunities were available to disrupt and diminish support for groups hostile to Russia, while encouraging local leaders that support Russian objectives. For example, in 2016, Russian operatives recruited criminal gangs to cause trouble in the tiny Balkan state of Montenegro and disrupt efforts by that country to join NATO. That attempt failed when several foreign agents and pro-coup Montenegrin politicians were detected, arrested, prosecuted, and imprisoned.

In February 2022, Russian agents tried to organize widespread protests in Ukraine that would justify Russian military intervention, aided by pro-Russian factions in the Ukrainian government. These factions were supposed to make it possible for pro-Russian groups belonging to the Ukrainian parliament and government to seize power. That effort failed because the Russians overestimated the number of pro-Russian officials in the Ukrainian government and the Russian invasion did not immediately succeed, as the Russians expected. There were too many Ukrainians willing and able to fight and defeat the Russian invaders.

The Russian FSB is the post-Soviet version of the KGB but has demonstrated a shortage of skills and ability to match the performance of the KGB in its prime. The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 was made possible, in part, because the KGB had also lost its ability to get things done. By the end of 2022, the military failures in Ukraine gave the FSB more political and financial support to move forward with spending more time, money and effort on their sleepers program. The FSB has to call on retired agents who had served during the pre-1991 Soviet Union era. Many Russian sleepers were exposed in the 1990s because Soviet archives were open to foreign historians, some of them secretly working for Western intelligence agencies. Many Russian sleepers were identified and arrested. That put an end to Western researchers studying KGB archives. Russia considers arresting their sleepers in Europe and North Americans a hostile act. The Russians quietly began rebuilding and expanding their sleeper network. Meanwhile the Russians arrested innocent Western visitors to Russia and kept them in prison until they could be exchanged for arrested Russian sleepers.

Western intelligence agencies now spend a lot of time trying to identify sleepers and pay more attention to acts of sabotage. These acts are often disguised as accidents of the result of a local feud. For the last two years, sleepers have become prime suspects. When pursuing whoever was responsible for acts of sabotage, sleepers are often at the top of the list of possible perpetrators.