Russian Sabotage Blamed for Fires in Europe

Security services in Europe suspect that Moscow is behind a recent spate of mysterious fires and other possible acts of sabotage. As the Guardian reports, fires and attacks on infrastructure in countries including the UK, Poland, Germany, Sweden, and the Baltic states could be part of an attempt to destabilize the West and disrupt support for Ukraine. "We are seeing now in several European countries that Russia is trying to destabilize us and also to intimidate us," Kajsa Ollongre, the Netherlands' defense minister, said at a meeting of EU foreign and defense ministers this week.

• Some of the alleged sabotage targets are seemingly random, including a shopping mall in Poland, a warehouse in England, and even an Ikea store in Lithuania, the New York Times reports. Security officials say the campaign, which also includes cyberattacks on critical infrastructure, is being led by Russia's military intelligence arm, the GRU, in an effort to force European countries to add extra security to potential targets, slowing down arms transfers to Ukraine.

• "We have seen several arrests across the alliance and different NATO allied countries of people who are accused of arson or sabotage," NATO secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg said at the EU summit. "These are of course ongoing legal processes. But what I can say is that we have seen increased Russian intelligence activity across the alliance. Therefore we have increased our vigilance."
• Earlier this month, the Financial Times reported that intelligence agencies had warned governments that Russia was planning to step up its sabotage campaign. The warning followed incidents including train derailments in Sweden and the arrest of two German-Russian nationals accused of plotting attacks on US military bases. "The obvious conclusion is that there has been a real stepping up of Russian activity," said Keir Giles at the Chatham House think tank. "One cannot tell if that's a reflection of the fact that the Russians are throwing more resources at it; whether they are being more sloppy and getting caught; or whether Western counter-intelligence has simply become better at detecting and stopping it."

(More Russia-Ukraine war stories.)