Download report: Russia's Crime-Terror Nexus: Criminality as a Tool of Hybrid Warfare in Europe (pdf)
Russia has created a network of agents to conduct its hybrid war against Europe. The network brings together government agencies and organized crime and Russian-speaking men with criminal records are being recruited to carry out acts of sabotage, according to a study.
"The study situates Moscow's tactics against the backdrop of its full-scale war on Ukraine, showing that hybrid operations are not a side theatre but a central pillar of Russian strategy," the researchers explain in their introduction. They compared these tactics to the approach of the so-called "Islamic State" (ISIS) terror group that recruited "former criminals who went on to carry out violent attacks in the Levant and Europe." The researcher explained that "today, a new crime-terror nexus has emerged in Europe โ this time orchestrated by a state actor โ Russia."
The study, entitled "Russia's Crime-Terror Nexus: Criminality as a Tool of Hybrid Warfare in Europe," was conducted by the non-governmental organization GLOBSEC and the International Center for Counter-Terrorism (ICCT), which presented their findings in Brussels at a meeting of the Special Committee on the European Democracy Shield (EUDS).
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They identified 131 perpetrators, of whom at least 35 had previous criminal involvement and were recruited through criminal organizations or from penal colonies. The overwhelming majority were male and the average age was 30. Most were Russian-speakers from a post-Soviet state and vulnerable in socio-economic terms, which led them to be motivated by financial compensation. "Financial incentives were decisive: payments ranged from a few euros for graffiti to substantial sums for attempted attacks on critical infrastructure."
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The researchers highlighted that Russia's "hybrid operations are inseparable from illicit finance and sanctions evasion." It found that Moscow had turned to "shadow financial operations to move money covertly across borders, pay operatives, and sustain its war economy."
"These channels enable the Kremlin to bypass restrictions, while simultaneously embedding criminal networks deeper into its hybrid warfare strategy," the researchers said.
It further demonstrates that "illicit finance, criminality, and hybrid operations are not separate challenges but elements of a single playbook. Russia's kinetic campaign โ bombings, arson, assassination plots โ should be seen as both punishment for Europe's support to Ukraine and preparation for potential wider conflict."
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The Russian government's use of criminals is nothing new, explained Dominika Hajdu from GLOBSEC, adding that people who "lived east of the Iron Curtain" still remembered how chronic supply shortages in the Soviet Union created and reinforced society's dependence on the shadow economy. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the fight against corruption was not a priority in Russia, unlike in other post-communist countries, she said. Instead, corrupt methods became the norm and the authorities' working method.
According to Hajdu, in 1994, there were over 500 criminal groups active in Russia and they controlled around 40,000 companies.
"In the early 2000s, representatives of the security services, including former officers of the KGB domestic intelligence, consolidated their control over the Russian state," she said. "And their connections to the criminal underworld became part of the state system."
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