Russia’s sabotage campaign against the West

00:00 08:28

Mark Galeotti has narrated this article for you to listen to.

When a DHL cargo plane crashed while approaching Vilnius airport on Monday, killing one of the crew, it looked like technical failure, but given that Russia was believed to be behind a series of incendiary devices which ignited on DHL flights and in warehouses this summer, inevitably many feared Moscow’s hand. The suspicion is likely to be the point. In the past year, the Russians have stepped up their disruptive activities in Europe, from cyber-attacks to assassinations, with the apparent aim of generating chaos and a climate of fear as much as anything else.

In February, a Russian defector was gunned down in Spain, in what seems to have been a hit commissioned by Moscow but carried out by gangsters. In March, petty criminals hired by the GU, Russia’s military intelligence, torched Ukrainian-owned warehouses in Leyton, east London.