Russian Hybrid Warfare Exposes EU’s Unused Powers

EU for­eign med­dling pow­ers exist but remain large­ly unused despite esca­lat­ing Russ­ian hybrid war­fare and influ­ence oper­a­tions tar­get­ing Euro­pean democ­ra­cy. Democ­ra­cy researcher Luise Quar­itsch told Fol­low the Mon­ey that Moscow’s influ­ence oper­a­tions have inten­si­fied since 2014, employ­ing hybrid war­fare tac­tics rang­ing from dis­in­for­ma­tion cam­paigns to phys­i­cal sab­o­tage, yet the bloc should focus on wield­ing exist­ing tools rather than cre­at­ing new trans­paren­cy reg­is­ters. The arti­cle begins:

For­eign actors are intens­fy­ing their efforts to influ­ence Europe’s democ­ra­cies, and the EU is scram­bling to respond. Its law­mak­ers are set to vote this week on cre­at­ing nation­al trans­paren­cy reg­is­ters to track exter­nal lob­by­ing. But democ­ra­cy researcher Luise Quar­itsch says the bloc should instead focus on the pow­ers already at its dis­pos­al. Hun­dreds of peo­ple across Ger­many woke up to a nasty sur­prise one morn­ing last Decem­ber. The exhaust pipes of their cars had been clogged with con­struc­tion foam, while stick­ers show­ing the Greens’ elec­tion can­di­date and the slo­gan “Be green­er” plas­tered the vehi­cles. Rad­i­cal envi­ron­men­tal­ists were blamed at first. But Ger­man inves­ti­ga­tors soon sus­pect­ed a far more sin­is­ter cul­prit: Moscow.

Read more: https://www.ftm.eu/articles/interview-luise-quaritsch-eu-foreign-meddling

Key Points

• Russ­ian van­dal­ism oper­a­tion tar­get­ed Ger­man Green Par­ty sup­port­ers with con­struc­tion foam and fake stickers
• EU law­mak­ers prepar­ing Octo­ber vote on manda­to­ry trans­paren­cy reg­is­ters for third-coun­try lob­by­ing activities
• Democ­ra­cy expert argues exist­ing legal instru­ments should be applied more con­sis­tent­ly instead of cre­at­ing new laws
• For­eign inter­fer­ence includes dis­in­for­ma­tion cam­paigns, cyber­at­tacks, sab­o­tage, covert lob­by­ing, and fake media organizations

Russian Hybrid Warfare and Influence Operations: Moscow’s Comprehensive Campaign to Undermine Western Democracy

Rus­sia has sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly devel­oped com­pre­hen­sive hybrid war­fare capa­bil­i­ties that blend con­ven­tion­al mil­i­tary threats with sophis­ti­cat­ed cyber oper­a­tions, dis­in­for­ma­tion cam­paigns, and covert influ­ence activ­i­ties to under­mine West­ern demo­c­ra­t­ic insti­tu­tions and NATO uni­ty. Rus­si­a’s infor­ma­tion war­fare cam­paign sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly con­t­a­m­i­nates AI mod­els and Wikipedia entries with pro-Krem­lin nar­ra­tives through the Prav­da net­work, which oper­ates across more than 80 coun­tries as an infor­ma­tion laun­dro­mat ampli­fy­ing Russ­ian mes­sag­ing dur­ing crit­i­cal polit­i­cal moments. The scope of these oper­a­tions extends from tra­di­tion­al troll farms to advanced cyber-espi­onage groups, as demon­strat­ed by UNC1151’s Ghost­writer oper­a­tion tar­get­ing NATO audi­ences in Lithua­nia, Latvia, and Poland with anti-West­ern nar­ra­tives while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly con­duct­ing cre­den­tial har­vest­ing and mal­ware campaigns.

Moscow’s hybrid war­fare evo­lu­tion has accel­er­at­ed dra­mat­i­cal­ly dur­ing the Ukraine con­flict, deploy­ing nov­el orga­ni­za­tion­al struc­tures that com­bine pub­lic mobi­liza­tion with pro­fes­sion­al dis­in­for­ma­tion net­works. Cyber Front Z rep­re­sents Rus­si­a’s new hybrid war­fare mod­el, oper­at­ing both a pub­lic Telegram chan­nel direct­ing vol­un­teers to post dis­in­for­ma­tion under their real names and a pri­vate pro­fes­sion­al troll army pay­ing over 100 oper­a­tives $431.96 month­ly to flood social media with 20,000 pieces of pro-Krem­lin con­tent with­in hours. NATO analy­sis con­firms that Russ­ian hybrid war­fare encom­pass­es “sab­o­tage, acts of vio­lence, cyber and elec­tron­ic inter­fer­ence, dis­in­for­ma­tion cam­paigns, and oth­er hybrid oper­a­tions” that con­sti­tute direct threats to Allied secu­ri­ty, requir­ing coor­di­nat­ed respons­es across the Euro-Atlantic area.

The insti­tu­tion­al foun­da­tion of Rus­si­a’s hybrid oper­a­tions demon­strates sophis­ti­cat­ed long-term strate­gic plan­ning, with the Inter­net Research Agency serv­ing as the foun­da­tion­al mod­el for wag­ing “infor­ma­tion war­fare” against the Unit­ed States through fic­ti­tious per­sonas and social media manip­u­la­tion, ulti­mate­ly lead­ing to US grand jury indict­ments of 13 Russ­ian nation­als for elec­tion inter­fer­ence. This evolved into more advanced decep­tion tac­tics, includ­ing pseu­do-fact-check­ing chan­nels like “War on Fakes” that reached over 625,000 sub­scribers and 30 mil­lion dai­ly views while spread­ing dis­in­for­ma­tion under the guise of objec­tive verification.

Atlantic Coun­cil research reveals that Russ­ian hybrid war­fare rep­re­sents “the most amaz­ing infor­ma­tion war­fare blitzkrieg we have ever seen,” with oper­a­tions char­ac­ter­ized by incred­i­bly large vol­umes of con­tent dis­trib­uted across mul­ti­ple chan­nels, while RAND Cor­po­ra­tion analy­sis indi­cates that these tac­tics are specif­i­cal­ly designed to exploit West­ern vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties through deni­able and covert actions sup­port­ed by con­ven­tion­al mil­i­tary superiority.

Exter­nal References:

• Meet­ing the Russ­ian hybrid chal­lenge — Atlantic Council
• NATO State­ment on Russ­ian hybrid activ­i­ties — North Atlantic Council
• The Poten­tial for Russ­ian Hybrid War­fare in the Baltics — RAND Corporation

Disclaimer

The Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) employs AI through­out the post­ing process, includ­ing gen­er­at­ing sum­maries of news items, the intro­duc­tion, key points, and often the “con­text” sec­tion. We rec­om­mend ver­i­fy­ing all infor­ma­tion before use. Addi­tion­al­ly, images are AI-gen­er­at­ed and intend­ed sole­ly for illus­tra­tive pur­pos­es. While they rep­re­sent the events or indi­vid­u­als dis­cussed, they should not be inter­pret­ed as real-world photography.