Hauke Hillebrandt

Nov 2025 · Inkhaven

Russia's Shadow War Vs the West

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Since invading Ukraine, Russia has dramatically escalated its 'hybrid warfare' against the West to fracture support for Ukraine. This systematic campaign is centrally coordinated, with intelligence revealing direction from Putin's Presidential Administration and First Deputy Chief of Staff.

Here's a select list of how Russia is waging its shadow war against the West (some I've come across via the excellent Sentinel newsletter and its x.com reports):

  1. Assassinations: Attacks have expanded from targeting defectors to Western business leaders and politicians. The EU president's plane was recently hit by suspected Russian GPS jamming and the plane had to land without GPS.[1] Russia almost crashed a German flight.[2] Russia has also plotted to assassinate the CEO of Germany's a major arms manufacturer supplying Ukraine (the first time Russia tried to kill a Western defense executive with no prior ties to Russia)[3].
  2. Election Interference: Russia conducted the 'highest volume of online foreign influence efforts' ever directed at Western elections. Romania annulled its 2024 presidential election due to a broad Russian interference campaign. Other operations included spending €200M to meddle in Moldova's elections and financing US influencers to interfere in the US elections[4] to erode support for Ukraine.
  3. AI-Enhanced Disinformation: Following bans on state media (RT, Sputnik), Russia has 'industrialized' its information warfare, pivoting to sophisticated proxy networks. Operations create fake Western media sites, and 'Storm-1516' deployed deepfakes in Germany's 2025 election. Russia is now the 'most prolific foreign influence actor using AI,' employing it to generate synthetic content at scale.
  4. Economic and Proxy Warfare: Russia has also deliberately engineered migrant crises on the borders of Finland and Poland. [5]
  5. NATO/EU airspace/water incursions: Drones have been detected over many NATO/EU countries,[6] especially over EU bases and airports.[7] Russia regularly jams UK military satellites. A Russian warship has been anchored in Danish waters for over a week.[8]
  6. Cyber warfare: Russia's cyber operations have escalated from espionage to systematic infrastructure targeting, including attacks on Viasat, resulting in collateral damage to German wind turbines, and, notably, US and Polish water systems, targeting civilian life-safety. Furthermore, Russia is trying to hack border, train, and military cameras in the UK to spy on and potentially disrupt the flow of Western aid to Ukraine.
  7. Terrorism: Russian operatives have sent parcel bombs to logistics hubs across the EU.[9] A Russian spy was also caught buying material for chemical weapons in Switzerland.[10] In 2024, a coordinated arson campaign struck Europe, destroying facilities including an Ikea warehouse in Lithuania, a shopping center in Poland (burning 1000+ shops), a site of the BAE defence firm in the UK, and a missile factory in Berlin.
  8. Physical attacks against Western critical infrastructure, employing a novel 'gig-economy' sabotage model, recruiting 'disposable agents' like local criminals[11] to target:

Notes

[1] EU chief von der Leyen's plane hit by suspected Russian GPS jamming 

[2] Suspected sabotage almost caused German plane crash, says spy chief 

[3] Russia’s Shadow War Against the West

[4] Russian interference in the 2024 United States elections - Wikipedia 

[5] Russia’s Shadow War Against the West 

[6] Weekly autogenerated reports, produced with the tooling that is also used at tools.sentinel-team.org  

[7]  EuromaidanPress 

[8] Denmark reports repeated Russian naval provocations in its straits | Reuters

[9] Russia’s Shadow War Against the West 

[10] Russe beschafft Material für Chemiewaffen in der Schweiz 

[11] The Scale of Russian Sabotage Operations Against Europe’s Critical Infrastructure