Europe

UK's Secret Intelligence Service MI6 is right to warn about Russia’s campaign of petty sabotage against the West. The goal is to disrupt and distract.

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Three Bulgarians [painting] red hands on Paris’s Holocaust Memorial ... An arson attack on an Ikea store in Vilnius, vandalising phone towers in Sweden and hacking the Czech railway operator, all in the past 12 months. Moscow has unleashed its intelligence agencies to carry out what seem petty incidents of sabotage. The International Institute for Strategic Studies has recorded at least 67 such incidents since 2022 in countries all over Europe thought to be linked to Russia.

Although attribution is often difficult, and some incidents will have nothing to do with Russia, it is clear that Putin’s regime is conducting a campaign of disruption and destruction in Europe. [UK's Spy chief Blaise] Metreweli called this “export of chaos” ... to divide, distract and dismay the West.

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There has been something of a shift in Russia’s campaign in recent years. In the past, the focus was on disinformation and amplifying disruptive political messages. Unlike the USSR, Putin’s Russia is essentially post-ideological. It can thus be all things to all people, and promote every useful message — from hard-right migrant alarmism to hard-left anticapitalism; regional secessionism to blood and soil nationalism; Black Lives Matter to the National Rifle Association.

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Sometimes, there are clear practical benefits for Moscow, such as the placing of cameras along Polish railway lines on which aid to Ukraine flows. (The cameras were discovered by railway staff and six people were arrested in 2023.) In other cases, operations are still about heightening division in society: the red-hand graffiti in Paris, for example, was used by Russian disinformation outlets to paint France as a haven for antisemitism.

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Moscow’s goal now seems to be to start to make people feel that their country’s support for Ukraine affects them directly. A [UK intel] GCHQ analyst, for example, told me of apparent efforts to temporarily degrade internet bandwidth, noting that “it may sound trivial, but think of the annoyance if you can’t do your online banking, or the film you wanted to download takes hours buffering”.

No one will go to war because their train is delayed or their phone signal wobbly — but they might begin to think twice about supporting another country’s war if the toll of inconveniences begins to mount. It also contributes to another Kremlin (and, indeed, Chinese) talking point, that degenerate western democracies simply don’t work.

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One of the reasons it is so difficult to resist and prepare for these attacks is their very variety. In May 2024, a German arms factory was gutted in a blaze the authorities blamed on Russian agents. In July 2024, improvised explosives hidden inside electric massagers detonated in DHL logistics hubs in Germany, Poland and the UK. The next month, mysterious break-ins on military bases in Germany prompted fears that water supplies had been tainted.

On Christmas Day last year, an ageing tanker leaving a Russian port seems to have dragged its anchors across the Estlink 2 underwater power cable between Estonia and Finland, cutting it. Last month Polish railway lines were cut by a bomb, and in recent weeks, what were described as “military-style drones” shadowed President Zelensky’s jet as he flew to Dublin.

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This also highlights another virtue of this new strategy for the Kremlin: it encourages and mobilises our own paranoia. Many of the alleged “Russian drones” which shut down airports across Europe in the autumn turned out either to be nothing to do with Russia — or not even to be drones at all. Once people were on their guard, though, they began seeing drones everywhere, and risk-averse airport operators duly shut down flights as soon as a report came in .... A Polish diplomat put it starkly: “The Kremlin has learned that it cannot get Europe to like it, so it hopes to force concessions on us by making us fear it.”

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One striking characteristic of the attacks to date has been that they tend to come in waves, followed by periods of relative calm, with little real connection to the military or political situation. The concern in some intelligence circles is that this is still a campaign at its “beta testing” phase — that after each spate of attacks, the Russians regroup and consider the lessons.

“It’s when they think they know what works best,” one British security official speculated, “that we might see them ready for a serious, sustained challenge.”

Nor is it a challenge likely to end if and when there is peace in Ukraine. With the White House now seen as a potential partner, Russian propaganda has pivoted to seeing Europe as its main enemy given its continued support for Kyiv. We may well have to cope with such attacks as long as Putin is in the Kremlin.

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In many ways, the best, if less exciting response is to go back to how Europe coped with political terrorism in the 1970s and 1980s: foiling as many plots as possible, but accepting that some would inevitably succeed. The answer was — and is — not to let that panic us or force a change in policy: to keep calm and carry on.

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cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/44387723

The chief legal counsel for the Free Speech Union in the UK was approached three times by accounts claiming to be researchers, but something seemed suspicious.

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[Bryn Harris'] name is associated with the Free Speech Union's [FSU’s] submissions to government on higher education legislation, passed in 2023, to strengthen legal protections for free speech and academic freedom across universities. It was intended to lessen the influence of Confucius institutes, Beijing-funded programmes that have been used for academic interference and to control the narrative around China at UK campuses.

He enlisted the help of UK-China Transparency (UKCT), a charity that researches the ties between Britain and China and focuses on the work of the communist party.

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Harris had first been contacted by a researcher called Lala Chen in June, another in July who called herself Ailin, and then a third woman called Emily in October.

UKCT arranged a technical analysis, which established that while the trio purported to work from the US, they were in the Asia-Pacific region. One used the photographs of a well known Korean actress, and another used an avatar from a Facebook dating service.

Harris suspected he was the target of a “China capture” campaign. It comes after MI5 issued a recent alert to MPs and peers that they were being targeted for information by Chinese intelligence agents. The Security Service identified two Linkedin profiles, used by Chinese spies, purporting to be “civilian recruitment headhunters” and targeting politicians to solicit insights and secrets.

MI5 also warned that Chinese spies were creating fake job adverts to try and lure government staff, academics, think tank employees and private defence contractors into handing over information. Thousands of suspicious job adverts have been posted to online job platforms “with more appearing daily”, according to the National Protective Security Authority, a branch of MI5.

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The targeting was not particularly sophisticated, Whitehall sources said, acknowledging that Chinese agents were sending out thousands of approaches and “kissing a lot of frogs”, but only needed one person to be lured in to consider the technique a win.

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While Harris was suspicious of the approaches immediately, he said he wanted to raise further awareness so that other professionals would be wary of similar approaches and job offers.

Sam Dunning, the director of UKCT, said it had also had repeated hostile cyber phishing attempts including one involving the impersonation of one of its advisers.

He said UK scientists were also receiving frequent research collaboration and job offers.

“It is remarkable that British citizens going about their lives should receive approaches of this kind. The strategy behind such approaches is exploitative, divisive and dishonest. We should ask ourselves: if this is what it is like now, then what does the future hold?”

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Addition:

Chinese spies are everywhere in UK. I’ve been followed to the pub -- [Archive link}

A dissident living in London reveals how agents have infiltrated British institutions, watching, following and feeding information back home

Russian state has tolerated parallel probiv market for its convenience but now Ukrainian spies are exploiting it.

cross-posted from : https://lemmy.ca/post/57398965

US President Trump stated that the fate of the peace plan for Ukraine depends solely on his decision. He noted that Zelenskyy "will have nothing until I approve it."

cross-posted from : https://lemmy.zip/post/55765150

cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/44341035

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Poland’s Energy Regulatory Office (URE) has concluded the country’s first-ever auction for offshore wind power, awarding contracts to three projects with a combined capacity of 3.4 gigawatts (GW).

The agreements provide for guaranteed prices for electricity produced from the wind farms, with the state making up the costs if prices are lower but receiving excess revenues if they are higher.

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The auction was seen as a crucial step in ensuring the viability of Poland’s nascent offshore wind sector. The country currently has no offshore wind farms in operation, with the first – Orlen’s Baltic Power, which did not take part in the auction – scheduled to come online next year.

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Following its successful completion, Poland’s was the largest such auction anywhere in Europe this year, exceeding the combined total of Germany and France, note analysts at Pekao, a bank.

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The three projects that reached such agreements in the auction were state energy giant Orlen’s Baltic East, with a capacity of 900 megawatts (MW); the 975-MW Baltica 9 project of another state firm, PGE; and Bałtyk I, a 1,560 MW project developed by private Polish firm Polenergia and Norway’s Equinor.

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Source Le Monde article

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For its entire existence, Ireland’s military intelligence service has operated in the shadows. Its leaders are known as the men without faces, whose identities are a guarded secret. Now for the first time, one of its leaders has been authorised to talk candidly about how it protects Ireland in a rapidly changing world.

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[The] interviewee is one of the senior leaders in the Irish Military Intelligence Service (IMIS) ... He is among those who brief the government on national security and can authorise covert operations.

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The scale and complexity of the threats facing Ireland were impossible to overstate. Hybrid warfare practised by hostile states, which can involve espionage, disinformation and influence campaigns, are very real. He said: “They are weaponising the state, I won’t say against itself, but certainly influencing the debate. We are being portrayed as the weak underbelly of Europe, which is not the case.”

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“Russia would be one hostile state actor we have a key concern about. China is another. We have a huge relationship with China, economically the EU [trades] with them, but there is also the Chinese Communist Party’s concept for One China 2049 [which includes national rejuvenation and reintegration with Taiwan]. If you look at that, and how that fits into the rest of the world, that would be a concern we are interested in."

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IMIS is constantly finding and monitoring foreign agents that are then discreetly forced to “pack their bags” and leave without the need for an arrest. “They don’t necessarily know we’ve been in the background, but we have had a lot of success doing that,” the man said.

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It is almost impossible to overstate how the Russians’ full invasion of Ukraine affected Irish military doctrine and security thinking. It caused the Defence Forces to look at every conceivable threat to the state and also its own integrity. Counter-intelligence and internal security have become the priority.

“We have counter-intelligence that looks into the Defence Forces. We’ve had soldiers in Lebanon approached by various nations looking for information or trying to recruit them, and we’ve worked against them because the soldier involved declared what happened,” he said.

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To fulfil its mission, IMIS works in conjunction with Europe’s intelligence services including Germany’s BND and France’s DGSE. In Ireland, it liaises with Garda Headquarters. Which agency takes responsibility for a specific operation is sometimes complicated because of the ever-evolving nature of threats. “Look at GRU [Russian military intelligence] activities all over Europe, if it’s proxy-based or if it’s overt. If it’s via a defence attacker crew, we have an expertise in it but we would alert the gardai as appropriate. If it’s not appropriate, we don’t.”

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The threat posed to Ireland by Russia is continually escalating. Ireland has already fallen victim to the Kremlin’s hybrid efforts. He points to the deployment of a Russian tactical group of warships off the south coast four years ago and Moscow’s engagement with Irish fishermen. The event, he says, was organised to embarrass Ireland. “The area they chose had cables underneath it, hugely valuable and important to a variety of multinationals,” he said.

“They were undermining the government, ridiculing the Defence Forces, creating the impression we can’t do anything. The Russian embassy involved itself, they met fishermen and suggested they saved the day. If you remember, the former chief of staff had met the Russian defence attaché at the time and they published his photo online. The net result was a media outcry about how the navy can do nothing.

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cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/44340351

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[Putin said that the task] had been accomplished: inflation would end the year below 6%.

Yet the Central Bank undercut that narrative almost immediately. Contrary to expectations, it lowered the key rate from 16.5% to just 16%.

If inflation truly is below 6%, that implies a real interest rate of roughly 10% — among the highest in the world. Brazil, often cited as an outlier, sits at 9.2%, while Mexico at 5.3%. Turkey and Argentina, despite having interest rates of around 38% and 29% respectively, do not even make the list because inflation there is near or above those levels.

[Russia Central Bank Governor Elvira] Nabiullina’s remarks after this month's rate meeting seemed to support this. Inflation has declined, she said, but not sustainably. The 6% figure only appeared in weekly data, which is not a reliable basis for identifying trends. And although inflation fell in November, it rose in October.

And beginning in January, it is expected to accelerate again, driven by a higher value-added tax (VAT), now applied to a wider swath of businesses, and by another round of increases in utility tariffs.

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Nabiullina, who once cloaked bad news in careful technocratic language, sounded increasingly like a Soviet official reciting a familiar formula: yes, there are shortcomings, but the strengths outweigh them. When all else fails, there is always the reassurance that the economy is “returning to a trajectory of balanced growth.”

In other words, the economy is shrinking — but it is shrinking according to plan.

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The government’s long-term budget forecast was striking in two respects. First, its sheer horizon: projections extend to 2042. Second, its candor: the budget is expected to remain in deficit throughout that entire period.

Even here, Soviet habits are evident. Oil is optimistically forecast at $69 a barrel by 2031. Officials stress that oil revenues will gradually give way to tax income. Putin promised that the higher VAT is not permanent, though he did not say when it would end. One might reasonably suspect it will end in 2042.

The date itself feels telling. It invites a grim literary echo of Venedikt Yerofeyev and Vladimir Voinovich’s dystopian “Moscow 2042.” It is hard to believe the choice was accidental.

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Then, too, Soviet decline was accompanied by triumphant propaganda. The language has changed, but not the function. Soon, Russians will be told daily how Ukrainian and European “militarism” obstructs Russia’s desire for peace. The euphemism of “forcing peace” requires no invention; it was tested long ago.

If this déjà vu is more than psychological, it is possible to sketch a timeline for how long the Russian economy will last. Oil prices collapsed in 1985. Though the Soviet Union survived until 1991, its economy became effectively nonviable by 1989.

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But the Soviet example suggests that public patience can end suddenly and collectively. Military spending now stands at 7.3% of GDP, according to a presentation by Defense Minister Andrei Belousov, a figure comparable to late-Soviet levels.

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Even if fighting were to end, Russia will be paying for this war for years, not least through high interest costs on government bonds. This year alone, the state issued nearly 8 trillion rubles’ ($102.5 billion) worth.

Meanwhile, the government is already propping up struggling sectors ranging from carmakers and aircraft manufacturers to railways, coal, metals and oil.

Even defense enterprises are faltering. Workers at the Kingisepp Machine-Building Plant, a strategic supplier to the Navy, recently complained of unpaid wages. The company’s director responded angrily, accusing them of petty self-interest at a time of national struggle.

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Whether this story concludes suddenly and almost bloodlessly, as the Soviet collapse did, or drags on in a long and painful decline is impossible to know. History does not repeat itself exactly.

But when economic narratives begin to sound this familiar, it is hard not to start counting the years.

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Poland said its air defence forces intercepted a Russian reconnaissance aircraft near Polish airspace over the Baltic Sea.

Meanwhile, radar systems also detected objects entering from Belarus overnight.

According to Poland’s Operational Command of the Armed Forces (DORSZ), fighter jets intercepted, visually identified and escorted the Russian military aircraft away from their area of responsibility on Thursday morning.

The aircraft was flying over international waters close to Poland’s airspace, the command said. DORSZ said air defence services remained on duty despite the holiday season.

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This stance comes amid growing uncertainties surrounding the rival Future Combat Air System (FCAS), a Franco-German-Spanish project plagued by industrial disputes and delays.

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The potential inclusion of Germany in GCAP highlights shifting dynamics in European defence aviation. Persistent tensions in FCAS, centred on workshare disagreements between Dassault Aviation and Airbus, have raised questions about its viability, prompting speculation that Berlin may seek alternatives to secure its next-generation fighter jet requirements. Italian Defence Minister Guido Crosetto recently noted that conditions are being established for new countries to join GCAP, explicitly mentioning Germany as a prospective partner alongside others like Australia. This openness aligns with GCAP's equal partnership model, which has already fostered rapid progress, including the establishment of a joint venture headquarters in the UK and plans for a demonstrator flight by 2027. Incorporating Germany could enhance the programme's industrial base, potentially accelerating development of the Tempest-derived aircraft and broadening its export potential.

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A survey of export firms published on Friday by the Finnish Chamber of Commerce indicates that most have high hopes for next year.

Nearly two-thirds of companies that responded to the poll expect exports to grow in 2026. That's up by six percentage points from a year ago, when six out of 10 said so. Expectations for the coming year are the most positive since 2022, when the question was first included in an annual corporate survey.

Last year, 11 percent of companies forecast that exports would decline, while now the corresponding figure was seven percent.

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In particular, firms expect that Germany's planned 500-billion-euro investments in infrastructure, digitalisation and defence will drive exports in Finland as well. Last week, Germany launched an additional 30-billion-euro initiative to boost private investments, Reuters reports.

Some 44 percent of respondents said they expect to benefit from those investments.

"In particular, companies feel that their prospects are brightened by investments in the defence sector and the green transition," Päivi Pohjanheimo, Director of International Affairs at the Central Chamber of Commerce, said in a press release on Friday.

"The construction and defence sectors particularly believe that they will benefit from German investments," she added.

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Hardly any firms said that they have moved operations or production to the United States as a result of President Donald Trump's tariffs policy. Instead, 80 percent of respondents said they are more interested in the EU market, with many expanding their European business due to the tariff policy.

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"The answers clearly reflect the current geopolitical situation: the unpredictability of the United States is worrying export companies. Instead, respondents see the EU and Nordic countries as safe and increasingly important trading partners," said Pohjanheimo.

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cross-posted from : https://lemmy.zip/post/55733228

Teresa Ribera says Europe’s competitiveness depends on resisting calls to roll back rules.

Paywall? https://archive.is/utkJ8

After Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, China did not distance itself from Moscow, but turned Russia into its raw material appendage. This was stated on Telegram by Andriy Kovalenko, head of the Center for Countering Disinformation of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine (CPD), UNN reports.

According to him, Russia's role in the Chinese vision of Europe is instrumental: Russia is not a partner of the EU or US level for China, but it is a useful factor of strategic pressure.

"Moscow creates constant security instability for Europe, which forces the EU to concentrate resources on containment, not on global competition with China," Kovalenko believes.

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In 20 years, in Chinese logic, Europe should remain economically significant, but politically fragmented. The collapse of the EU may be beneficial. But Europe, in Beijing's vision, should not become weak, but only slow. Not hostile, but cautious. It is such a Europe that allows China to balance between the US and the EU, using the difference in interests between European countries. And all of Beijing's actions towards Europe over the past 10-15 years only confirm this logic.

He adds that individual countries should become dependent on Chinese money, and Russia, as an element of pressure, will continue to play this role, as Beijing's raw material appendage.

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Ukraine is preparing a number of sanctions decisions against Russian entities and those who assist the aggression, including individuals from China, by the end of the year.

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There is no doubt that in the medium and long term, China will be a very significant global power, and this will not change anytime soon, and China will protect its interests. I accept the intelligence that has recently come from Europe and the UK, but on the other hand, China has never initiated a war in modern times.

• the minister stated.