Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has said Russia could be behind the fire at the Marywilska 44 shopping centre in Warsaw. Photo: Dariusz Borowicz/Agencja Wyborcza.pl via REUTERS
First, a warehouse in east London that was used to deliver aid to Ukraine burned down. A few weeks later, an Ikea store mysteriously caught fire in Vilnius, Lithuania.
Swedish investigators have already looked into the possibility that several train derailments could have been caused by a state-backed saboteur.
>Then inferno engulfed the largest shopping center in Warsaw, the capital of Poland. It was Donald Tusk, the Prime Minister of Poland, who began to connect the dots, suggesting that the West was under attack from Russian espionage.
“We are looking into the leads – they are quite likely – that the Russian intelligence services had. something to do with the Maryvilskaya fire,” he said last month.
His claims received further support when a former Russian soldier was arrested north of Paris this week after he explosives exploded in the hotel room.
Warnings from European intelligence agencies that Russia is preparing acts of sabotage on the continent as part of its escalation. standoffs with the NATO military alliance have taken center stage.
Intelligence assessments provided to Western governments claim that Russia's notorious GRU military intelligence agency, known for its attacks on foreign soil using highly trained agents, is now turning to criminal groups to carry out terrorist attacks in Europe.
The Kremlin's spy network was dealt a blow in the weeks after Russia's invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, when more than 600 of its intelligence officers with diplomatic cover were expelled from Europe.
A similar tactic was used by Britain when James Cleverley, Home Secretary, expelled Colonel Maxim Elovik, Moscow's military attaché, following an alleged Russian-linked arson attack on an east London warehouse used by a company providing aid to Ukraine.
Four men will stand trial next year accused of setting fire to a commercial property, a court heard last month.
Lack of sophistication
Alexander Lord, lead analyst for Europe and Eurasia at geopolitical risk firm Sibylline, said: “The capabilities these gangs can provide are quite low, but they could still achieve Russian foreign policy goals, namely to destabilize the West, contain European solution”. -makers are against supporting Ukraine and exacerbating polarization and social tension not only in NATO, but also in the European Union.”
The lack of experience is of particular concern to Western intelligence agencies, since the proxies the Kremlin now relies on are more likely to cause collateral damage due to their lack of explosives skills.
>A Western counterintelligence officer told the Financial Times: “There is a high likelihood of collateral damage and casualties as proxies are not skilled in crafts such as explosives.”
Their theory was demonstrated earlier this week when a former Russian soldier from Ukraine's eastern Donbass region suffered serious burns in an explosion Tuesday in a hotel room in Roissy-en-France, near Paris Charles de Gaulle airport .
< p>Investigators confirmed they found bomb-making materials when Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky arrived in France to take part in celebrations marking the 80th anniversary of D-Day.
The trend has been tracked since the start of the year.
“Tick, tick, tick the list of all the things that have been identified as actions that Russia might do in the run-up to a conflict to immobilise,” Keir Giles, a senior fellow at the Chatham House think tank, said of his own assessment of the situation.
“And the pattern has only strengthened since then,” he added.
Unexplained explosions
Despite the lack of sophistication in some alleged acts of sabotage, military installations have also been targeted.
Two men have been arrested in Germany for an alleged plot to blow up a NATO facility in the south of the country that is being used to support Ukraine. Dual Russian and German citizens were arrested after they were caught doing what the Interior Ministry said was “surveillance” of a US military facility.
Poland has arrested a man it says was suspected of helping Russian intelligence prepare an attack on Zelensky. The country's railways, which carry military aid east to Ukraine, were also attacked.
One Western official said: “We are seeing continued sabotage as yet another escalation in Russian behavior.”
These more serious incidents will further raise questions about unexplained explosions at the BAE Systems ammunition plant in Wales, which supplies ammunition used in Ukraine, and at a similar facility owned by German arms firm Diehl.
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Russian agents were accused of a similar attack on a Czech arms depot in October 2014, where weapons destined for Kyiv were also stored.
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