European countries are ill-prepared for threat of co-ordinated sabotage attacks by Russia and China, a classified EU intelligence report has warned
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The assessment, sent to Brussels in the spring […] underscores increasing concerns from Western officials that Beijing and Moscow are working in parallel, learning from each other’s tactics to undermine Western democracies and sow chaos.
“What is innovated by China on one end of the globe will be perfected by Russia on the other,” according to a portion of the report. “[EU nations] need to respond jointly and globally to attacks – even (or especially) those countries who are only indirectly affected.”
In a stark warning from EU diplomats to European commissioners, the document warns of “a gap” in Western thinking which China and Russia are seeking to “exploit”.
Experts consulted in the report, […] said that Russia is learning from Beijing’s so-called “grey zone” tactics in Taiwan, and perfecting them for use in Europe.
The term “grey zone” is used to describe the situation which exists between peace and open warfare and hostile activities fall just below what might be considered traditional acts of war.
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Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the UK and other European nations has seen an increase in suspected hybrid attacks co-ordinated by Moscow, such as cyber hacks, arson, disinformation and possible sabotage of critical undersea communication cables.
China has continued to deploy grey-zone warfare tactics by repeatedly encircling Taiwan with fighter jets and navy ships, launching cyber attacks, and making provocative statements of its desire to “reunite” with the self-ruled island. It has also launched at least a dozen rockets – or satellite missions – that have passed over Taiwan’s air defence zone in the past two years as fears of an all-out invasion grow.
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The classified EU report argues that Taiwan is only a “sub-theatre” for a much larger war against the West “rather than just one country”.
Dr Sari Arho Havrén, a associate fellow at the Rusi think-tank and China analyst, said the tactics are “perfect tools” to attack the “vulnerabilities of open, democratic and rule of law societies” because Russia and China can work together to weaken Western nations while simultaneously maintain a “plausible deniability”.
She [said]: “China and Russia have deepened their co-operation and co-ordination on all areas, and not least on security and militarily.
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“China’s support for Russia’s war economy through dual-use goods and sanctions evasion could be mirrored in a Taiwan scenario, with Russia also providing combat expertise or hybrid distractions like cyber attacks on European infrastructure.”
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If Chinese President Xi Jinping wanted to attack Taiwan, “he would first make sure that he makes a call to his very junior partner in all of this, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin… telling him, ‘Hey, I’m going to do this, and I need you to to keep them busy in Europe by attacking Nato territory’,” Rutte said in an interview with The New York Times.
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The West should seek to destroy Russian society by all means short of kinetic war. Cyberattacks should be relentless; coordinated sanctions and other financial measures; drug smuggling; sabotage of all forms, especially of their oil pipelines and shipping; stoking separatism in the Caucuses and central Asian regions; and so on.
Our objective (at least in the EU) is not to destroy russian society, since they live next to us. Our objective is to protect ourselves from their attacks and let them drown in their own shit, if they keep insisting in living like that.
e.g. sanctions are not there just to punish them, they are to try to defund their attacks against us.
PS: We in the EU (e.g. Merkel) used to think that by helping them rebuild their society and building commercial ties and goodwill after the USSR they would become reliable partners that grew their pride in being constructive (hence why we didn’t want to spend on defense). But they’d rather make a mess and use those ties to undermine us so…fuck 'em.
PPS: the danger that seems to be looming is that it seems that both China and the US want to turn russia into the EU’s Pakistan, the same way Pakistan is a nuclear-armed failed state used to fuck with India and keep it under control.
You (and we) will never be safe from the blyats while strongmen control their population. It is long past time to destroy their society. We should have started on that project ~20 years ago.
Well, yea, in hindsight, we should have had a far more muscled approach with them, especially since 2007. But I don’t know what you mean by destroy their society. Their society is already fucked.
Destruction of government and civil society. The state of russia must be forced out of existence. Spare as many lives as possible.
Merkel said Minsk II was deception. What we as citizens think that is happening is not entirely what the politicians are doing. Although her statement could also have been a lie.
I never talked about Minsk, that’s just mitigation after the fire started to spread. I talked about her 30 years of Ostpolitik, including 16 during her chancellorship.
If the last 6 years were a deception, why not the first 10?
russians yelling about Minsk is funny, they do 10x as much, 10x worse and then complain that we didn’t take their bullshit promises at face value…it’s a very bad vatnik talking point. We know what russia has been doing for decades, but we thought they were misunderstood, but now it is clear that they should be dealt with the same contempt that they have for us.
Did we? The message for the population is one thing, but the professional diplomats and politicians must have known better.
russia had plenty of room for deescalation and to save face before they decided to go all in in 2022 and annex country unilaterally again. After that, there was no point pretending anyone took Minsk seriously anymore.
Right. The important part is that we never took it seriously. So it is very likely that the diplomats and politicians are not as naive as they seem to be.
I am fairly confident that these occur already.
While western countries have an interest to emphasize the threat by such actions and attribute them to Russia in order to gain more support from the population, Russia has an interest to downplay such actions that hit Russia, in order to not loose support from the population, who should believe the war to only happen outside their borders.
However the attackers always have an interest in not taking responsibility for the attacks, unless its the Ukrainians pulling off some spectacular attack like the destruction of Russian strategic bombers deep inside Russia.
There also is a native resistance base inside Russia and Belarus that is most likely receiving outside support. For instance there was a wave of sabotage in Belarus and Russia against train infrastructure used to supply the Russian invasion army.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_war_in_Belarus_(2022–present)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_war_in_Russia_(2022–present)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BYPOL
If so, then it needs to be increased 100-fold. And that won’t happen until the US gets its shit together.