Russia's hybrid attacks began after the annexation of Crimea and are becoming increasingly brazen, security experts say. The West has started to acknowledge the danger but still does not treat individual incidents as parts of the same anti-Western hybrid war.
In Västerås, Sweden, about a hundred kilometers from Stockholm, stands a Russian Orthodox Church. The Swedish Security Service has reported that the church has ties to Russian intelligence in Sweden and that Russia uses the Russian Orthodox Church as a cover for intelligence activities. Nearby are an airfield, a water treatment plant and energy companies.
"Sensors can be installed there – cameras or some sort of listening devices – to monitor communications. Additionally, it could be used for accommodation, including housing special forces. It was later discovered that the planning process did not follow legal procedures, but the church is there today," said security expert Martin Hurt.
Hurt also pointed out that not all Scandinavian countries have developed the same sense of threat awareness as those bordering Russia.
"Unfortunately, in some Scandinavian countries that have enjoyed long periods of peace, some people continue to live in that mindset," he noted.
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"There have been attacks on railway systems. Trains have been halted in Germany and Sweden. In France, for example, on the opening day of the Olympic Games, there was a strange attack in three locations simultaneously on railway lines leading to Paris," [security expert Eerik-Niiles] Kross noted.
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"There has been a reluctance to acknowledge that this is a systematic, centrally directed sabotage campaign targeting not just one country or another, but the Western world as a whole," he said.
Kross highlighted the so-called "triple A model," introduced in NATO and the European Union in recent years, derived from the English terms: acknowledge the event, assess it and attribute it to the perpetrator. According to Kross, a fourth "A" – act – is missing.
"Every time something like this happens, €100 million in frozen Russian assets should be taken and handed over to Ukraine," he suggested as an example.
[Edit typo.]