Russia’s Expanding Terror Campaign Against Europe’s Critical Infrastructure
Russia’s war against Ukraine extends far beyond the frontlines. According to a new report by the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), Moscow is waging a systematic campaign of sabotage — or terrorism — against European critical infrastructure, designed to destabilize governments, disrupt supply chains, and weaken NATO’s collective resolve.
The August 2025 study, The Scale of Russian Sabotage Operations Against Europe’s Critical Infrastructure, is based on the most comprehensive open-source dataset of Russian operations to date. It reveals a sharp rise in both the scale and boldness of these attacks since the 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Targets range from undersea cables and oil pipelines to weapons factories, rail lines, and telecommunications systems.
“Russia’s sabotage of critical infrastructure is central to its unconventional war on Europe and designed to weaken Western resilience and unity,” the report states.
Terror Below the Threshold of War
The Kremlin’s doctrine of gibridnaya voyna (hybrid war) deliberately blurs the distinction between peace and war. Acts of terrorism — bombings, arson, cyberattacks, and assassinations — are carried out alongside propaganda and military threats to undermine European security.
Recent incidents illustrate this approach: a massive fire at a Warsaw shopping center in 2024, linked to Russian operatives, demonstrated Moscow’s willingness to hit civilian economic targets.
In Spain, an explosion at a warehouse supplying communications equipment to Ukraine was also traced back to Russian networks. Meanwhile, sabotage of submarine cables in the Baltic Sea has shown how vulnerable Europe’s digital infrastructure remains.
The report warns that Moscow carefully calibrates these operations to stay below the threshold that would trigger a NATO military response. Western governments often hesitate to publicly attribute terrorist attacks, allowing Russia to maintain plausible deniability and avoid direct consequences.
The “Gig Economy” of Terrorism
One striking finding is how Russia has adapted after European states expelled over 600 Russian diplomats and intelligence officers in 2022. With fewer trained operatives on the ground, Russian intelligence services have turned to what the IISS calls a “gig economy” model.
Through Telegram channels and criminal networks, Russia recruits untrained locals and migrants for acts of vandalism and sabotage, ranging from planting cameras along NATO rail routes to carrying out arson attacks on military facilities. This decentralized approach lowers costs and risks for Moscow while overwhelming European law enforcement.
Despite their amateur nature, these attacks are highly effective because critical infrastructure remains vulnerable. Europe’s aging power grids, rail systems, and water networks create numerous single points of failure, allowing low-cost acts of terrorism to cause outsized disruption.
Strategic Drift in Europe
The report criticizes NATO and EU responses as largely reactive and defensive, focusing on resilience rather than deterrence. While operations like Baltic Sentry — launched in January 2025 to monitor undersea infrastructure — signal progress, their scale and funding are insufficient. NATO’s gradual pivot to unmanned systems to patrol the Baltic Sea has already reduced deterrence, the IISS warns.
“Europe operates in a grey zone of its own making,” the report concludes. “By refusing to recognize Russia’s sabotage campaign as warfare, governments avoid decisive action, leaving Moscow undeterred.”
A Growing Threat
So far, no mass-casualty terrorist attack in Europe has been directly attributed to Russia since 2022, but the IISS warns this restraint is strategic, not moral. The Kremlin’s intelligence services are probing Europe’s defenses, lowering the threshold for escalation and increasing the risk of catastrophic incidents.
The study calls for a coordinated European strategy that treats Russian sabotage as state-sponsored terrorism, not isolated incidents. That includes stronger public attribution, harsher sanctions, and closer public-private cooperation to harden infrastructure.
“Allowing the Kremlin to normalize sabotage as a tool of statecraft risks long-term strategic erosion and miscalculation that could drag Europe into deeper conflict,” the authors warn.
Russia’s bombing campaigns in Ukraine, its sabotage of Western logistics, and its targeting of civilian facilities abroad are part of a single war: one fought with missiles and misinformation, assassins and arsonists. Europe faces a stark choice — either confront Russia’s terror campaign as war or risk watching it expand unchecked.
