Russia’s security and intelligence services have intensified sabotage and subversion operations across Eastern Europe, employing tactics from GPS signal jamming to arson attacks. The recent signal jamming attack conducted against Ursula von der Leyen’s plane in southern Bulgaria highlights the growing extent to which Russian operatives are willing and able to target high-profile political figures.

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  • Since February 2022, Russia’s security and intelligence services have intensified sabotage and subversion operations across Eastern Europe, employing tactics from GPS signal jamming to arson attacks.

  • The recent signal jamming attack conducted against Ursula von der Leyen’s plane in southern Bulgaria highlights the growing extent to which Russian operatives are willing and able to target high-profile political figures.

  • Moscow’s interference operations aim to both disrupt Ukrainian supply chains and signal Russia’s desire to regain hegemonic status within its former satellite states.

  • Misinformation and physical sabotage campaigns in Poland demonstrate the range of tactics used by Russian operatives to achieve strategic national security objectives within the former eastern bloc.

  • Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia are likely to face an increase in the number of GPS jamming and signal spoofing incidents being conducted against both government and civilian air couriers due to the strategic significance of the Gulf of Finland to Russian naval forces.

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Since its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Russia has relied increasingly heavily upon sabotage and subversion as instruments of foreign policy. These tactics, which range from arson attacks to radar signal jamming, constitute part of Moscow’s so-called “hybrid warfare” strategy, which aims to disrupt the operations of Ukraine’s European allies without a full deployment of military force.

However, recent adjustments to the targets and tactics selected by the Kremlin suggest that the “hybrid war” strategy has undergone a degree of revision. Namely, western government officials have been targeted more overtly when travelling to via eastern Europe, whilst physical sabotage operations against industrial targets have grown more violent and expansive in scope.

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Public and private sector stakeholders with links to western Europe or Ukraine are highly advised to revise and enhance their existing security protocols to ensure robust protection against the threat of Russian interference.

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