A major Russian terrorist attack is now only a matter of time

Unity and urgency must define the West’s response to this threat. Yet still we bury our heads in the sand

Russia’s shadow war against the West continues to intensify rapidly. On Monday, Poland exposed the Kremlin’s plans to export camouflaged explosives to Britain and the EU. Once these parcels landed on European soil, they would transit by air to the US and Canada, triggering a mass casualty event mid-flight.
Russia has furiously denied Poland’s allegations, but the scheme outlined by Polish officials may already have taken root. On 22 July, a device mysteriously exploded at a DHL warehouse in Minworth near Birmingham. This incident followed a similar detonation at a DHL depot in Leipzig, Germany. Both incidents are being investigated as Russia sponsored arson attacks.
Why is Russia allegedly using arson attacks as a tool of hybrid warfare? The story begins with the breakdown in Russia-West relations that followed Putin’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and invasion of Donbas. In October 2014, an explosion at a warehouse in the Czech Republic destroyed 50 tonnes of ammunition and killed two bystanders. In December, a second explosion occurred in the same facility and detonated 50 tons of ammunition. GRU agents were eventually implicated in these attacks.
The story then moves forward to the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, when more than 600 Russian diplomats were expelled from European embassies. Many of them were intelligence officers using diplomatic cover.
These expulsions restricted Russia’s ability to carry out traditional espionage and forced it to rely more heavily on criminal networks and lone-wolf assets. In June, Germany’s BfV domestic intelligence agency unmasked this tactic. To partially compensate for the loss of its undercover spies, Russia paid two German nationals 400,000 euros apiece to commit acts of high treason.
Ukraine’s acquisition of F-16 fighter jets, use of Nato-class weaponry against Russian targets and incursion into western Russia’s Kursk region added kerosene to the flames.
As empty threats of nuclear Armageddon and strikes on Nato weapons supply routes to Ukraine lose their potency, Russia is using terrorism as a tool of deterrence. One of its first acts was hiring a 20-year-old Leicestershire man Dylan Earl to carry out an arson attack against a Ukrainian-owned warehouse in east London in March. It was only a similar attack on an Ikea store in Vilnius, Lithuania in May and Polish prime minister Donald Tusk’s subsequent warnings of foreign instigation that caused Europe to take notice.
While the demolition of Russian spy networks through periodic arrests and public warnings of Russia’s malign activities are positive steps, so much more needs to be done. In April 2021, former MI6 chief John Sawers estimated that only 10 per cent of Russia’s espionage operations in Britain had been uncovered. Belgian and Latvian officials have issued similar warnings in recent months.
Accused Russian spies still operate in European embassies. One example is Russian chargé d’affaires in Brussels Kirill Logvinov, who engages with European officials in plain sight. Due to its reliance on Russian nuclear energy, Hungary has streamlined the arrival of Russian nationals into its territory. This exposes the entire Schengen zone to espionage and sabotage.
The West needs to call out Russia’s hybrid warfare for what it is: state-sponsored terrorism. Unity and urgency must define the West’s response to this threat. Yet still we bury our heads in the sand. What will wake us up?
Dr Samuel Ramani is an associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute