Russian Sabotage of NATO Infrastructure: Identifying Alliance Vulnerabilities

Sabotage operations attributed to Russia across Europe’s civilian infrastructure and military supply chains have long been a feature of its covert activities since the Soviet period. But these attacks have escalated in geographical scope, range of targeting and intensity since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

In principle, these activities have multiple aims, including increasing the costs for NATO of its military and economic support for Ukraine; temporarily disrupting supply chains, and sowing a broader sense of discord in the West, as well as sapping cohesion. These operations have thus far stopped short of the threshold that could prompt a military response from NATO, and problems of ultimate attribution – as well as the high burden of proof required in European jurisdictions – make it challenging to identify the full scope of Russia-sponsored activities. Russia’s use of proxies and third parties to conduct these attacks – some of whom are unaware of their ultimate bankroller –allows the Kremlin a degree of flexibility, strategic distance and plausible deniability. Complicating the picture, some activities have been wrongly attributed to Russia, at times giving a false and inflated sense of its reach into Europe.

These sabotage activities have often collectively been referred to as Russia’s ‘shadow war against the West’ – taking place in the liminal zone of deniability and attribution, using unconventional resources and methods that blur the line between intelligence activities and overt warfare.

At the same time, Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a parallel war away from the front lines, which has focused on targeting each other’s civilian infrastructure, including transport infrastructure, electrical grids and oil refineries. Here, the motives are similar but slightly different – Russia’s attacks are designed to hobble infrastructure, demoralise the population and increase costs for Ukraine. This paper does not cover these actions, but they are a useful point of comparison with Russia’s strategy in Europe, which has broader aims and strategic implications for NATO.

Russian sabotage against NATO states is not new, and takes various forms, such as disinformation narratives and cyberattacks, and has long been a feature of Russia’s approach to countries it does not consider allies. This paper focuses chiefly on the disruption attributed to Russia of European civilian infrastructure and supply chains in NATO countries since the Ukraine war began in 2022. It considers the extent to which Russia’s actions form an intentional campaign to achieve specific objectives to challenge NATO’s logistics and how Russia’s targeting has evolved over time to meet political and practical needs.

Crucially, this paper considers what Russia may be learning about vulnerabilities inherent in NATO’s transport infrastructure required for military purposes, as well as identifying some of the inconsistencies between Alliance members on military transport, as well as considering the possible impact this might have on NATO’s ability to move troops and sustain them at a potential front line on its Eastern flank.