Since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, NATO member states have seen a sharp rise in destructive incidents across various sectors. Civilian infrastructure — shopping malls, factories, and storage units — have been targeted by fires, while train lines crucial for both civilian and military use in Sweden, Germany, and France have been disrupted. Defence plants supplying Ukraine have also suffered, with incidents such as the March 2024 fire at a London aid warehouse and the April 2024 explosion at a Welsh arms factory. Most recently, Russia has been suspected of planting an incendiary device on a plane bound for Germany and the United Kingdom. If true, this signals a further escalation of Moscow’s sabotage strategy, aimed at Western logistics systems. Similar destructive events have also spread to the US, including an April 2024 blast at a Pennsylvania ammunition plant, while Russia has experienced its own share of ‘accidents’, likely linked to Ukraine.
This wave of sabotage is arguably the most severe the West has faced since the Second World War. Although deniability remains a hallmark of such operations, key officials are increasingly convinced that many of these attacks are orchestrated by the Kremlin. Western governments and NATO leaders have publicly condemned Russia, holding its intelligence agencies and affiliated entities accountable for this surge in sabotage and disruptions. They have now also taken a variety of measures aimed at countering this kinetic threat from Moscow.
Our recent article ‘Russian Sabotage in the Gig Economy Era’, published in The RUSI Journal, argues that advancements in information communication technologies (ICTs), combined with the mass expulsion of Russian intelligence officers from the West, have led the Kremlin to adopt a ‘gig economy’ model for its sabotage operations. We contend that this transformation is visible in three crucial areas: recruitment, cost, and scale. By leveraging modern technology, Moscow has streamlined operations, cutting down on training needs and allowing for faster, more adaptable recruitment and control. The use of advanced ICTs has not only reduced the financial burden of these risky operations but has also enabled them to expand in size and pace, all while maintaining plausible deniability.
The article highlights ways in which the recent wave of sabotage attacks across the West mirrors the Soviet Bloc’s Cold War sabotage doctrine. While we have no evidence of sabotage being actively used by Moscow and its allies during the Cold War, we do know that specific plans to carry out such kinetic operations in the West were in place. Events unfolding today mimic these plans in myriad ways: the recent attacks aimed at civilian transport, communication lines, and military sites primarily target states Moscow considers more hostile, aka NATO members most supportive of Ukraine. The intensity of these operations has escalated alongside increasing Western military and financial support for Ukraine, especially since the decision to allow some Western weapons to be used on Russian soil. Following Cold War principles, these operations remain sub-threshold, designed to appear as accidental disruptions such as fires or communication failures, thereby allowing Moscow to maintain deniability. As in the Cold War, these sabotage efforts are reinforced by Russia’s ‘active measures’—propaganda campaigns aimed at undermining Western resolve, stoking societal divisions, fuelling unrest, and inciting fear, all to weaken trust in government and sway public opinion towards anti-Western causes.
With regard to tactics, we highlight similarities as well as important differences enabled by ICTs. During the Cold War, Moscow outsourced most of its high-risk covert operations—assassinations, kidnappings—to what could be termed as contractors, often third-country nationals, known as ‘agents-saboteurs’. Recent findings in the Czech Security Service Archive confirm that, during the Cold War, such agents-saboteurs were to be used in a dozen planned sabotage attacks designed by Prague’s top secret sabotage unit, in coordination with the KGB. These individuals were carefully recruited, handled and trained by Soviet Bloc intelligence officers. In our recent RUSI piece, we argue that since the start of the war in Ukraine, Moscow seems to have moved away from its old recruitment model, characterised by in-person hiring of reliable, capable, and courageous individuals as potential assailants. While continuities clearly exist, an examination of Putin’s recent sabotage campaign reveals some important changes.
Evidence suggests Moscow has broadened its recruitment of agents-saboteurs through online platforms, tapping into a wider pool than the usual suspects. While intelligence agencies have long outsourced tasks to contractors to cut costs and meet demand spikes, Russia’s new sabotage model more closely aligns with the principles of the ‘gig economy’. This modern approach relies on a flexible, largely online workforce where short-term engagements are common, and freelancers are hired for specific, temporary roles. What distinguishes this system from earlier forms of freelancing is the crucial role of advanced ICTs such as encrypted messaging apps, GPS tracking, mapping services, and cryptocurrency channels. These have enabled Russian intelligence services to rapidly expand their sabotage operations. At the same time, gig-economy sabotage reduces the time and costs associated with recruiting and training agents, provides flexibility by widening the recruitment pool (thus making detection more difficult), and cuts operational expenses. These factors combined enable Moscow to increase both the scale, speed and deniability of its sabotage activities, while maintaining a more elusive and cost-efficient framework for disruption.
For more on what we currently know about Russia’s flexible recruitment of gig-economy era agents-saboteurs, how this has lowered the costs of these high-risk operations, and, in turn, impacted the deniability, scale and tempo or these operations, read our article and listen to the episode "A New Approach to Sabotage" on RUSI Journal Radio.
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