U.S. officials warn of Russia’s sabotage operations in Europe : NPR

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

Russia’s war in Ukraine has given NATO a renewed sense of purpose and urgency. Fears of a widening conflict dominated the alliance’s summit in Washington, D.C., this week, and officials reportedly believe Russia is behind sabotage operations in Europe that often target weapons supplies for Ukraine – fire at a German weapons factory, assassination plots against European defense industry executives and incidents of arson in the U.K. and Poland. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said last month, we know what they’re up to, and he vowed to respond, along with European allies. Andrea Kendall-Taylor is a former senior U.S. intelligence officer, specializing in Russia and Europe. She’s now a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security. Thanks so much for being with us.

ANDREA KENDALL-TAYLOR: Great to be with you.

SIMON: The Kremlin says this is fake news. Do you believe it?

KENDALL-TAYLOR: Absolutely not. We have seen a significant uptick in Russia’s use of these hybrid tactics, and I think to understand what we’re doing, we have to be very clear about what Russia is trying to accomplish. We know that Russia, first and foremost, is intent on subjugating and controlling Ukraine, but Russia’s interests go far beyond Ukraine, and the Kremlin really sees itself as being in a much wider war with the West. And so all of these tactics are designed to take the war to the West, but because it still fears NATO and sees NATO as a credible deterrent, it’s using these tactics that fall below the threshold of war, so it’s basically a war, but using other means.

SIMON: Meaning if they – as long as Russia doesn’t resort to using troops, NATO won’t respond in a way that they feel makes them vulnerable.

KENDALL-TAYLOR: That’s right. Basically, it is falling short of that threshold of Article 5, which would trigger a collective response, but Russia seems to believe that as long as it stays below that threshold, it has free reign to try to destabilize our societies, to try to convince European citizens that they should halt their support for sending aid to Ukraine, so that’s what they’re doing.

SIMON: Do we know how the U.S. and European partners are responding?

KENDALL-TAYLOR: Well, it is notable, as you said, that in the NATO Summit Declaration, the allies called out this increase in Russian hybrid attacks, so that’s a very positive step. A lot of our European NATO allies have long been dealing with these Russian tactics. Our northern European allies in Sweden and Finland, Estonia, Latvia – they take a very different approach, a whole-of-society approach, to try to increase their resilience to Russian tactics.

But I think the problem at this moment is that we don’t have a collective response to what Russia is doing, so they use disinformation tactics against the French elections. It’s Paris’ problem to deal with it. They blow up a depot in Estonia. It’s Tallinn’s problem to deal with it, and so long as that is the case, then the costs, from the Kremlin’s perspective, will be tolerable. So even though we’re working very hard to address these tactics, I think we have to take another step and collectivize the response, so that we can increase the costs and signal to Putin that we won’t tolerate these attacks on our open and democratic societies.

SIMON: When you say a whole-society approach, what does that mean, and who’s doing it?

KENDALL-TAYLOR: Well, I think it’s an open discussion between the government and its citizens, that they are aware of Russia’s objectives, and they take steps all the way down to the local level to prepare so people understand, are better educated about how to approach media and looking for and exposing disinformation when they see it, being prepared for blackouts or other things resulting from Russian attacks on critical infrastructure.

SIMON: I want to be very careful with this last question, but I think it might be rolling around in the minds of a lot of people listening to us. In your judgment, does President Putin have a favorite in the U.S. presidential elections?

KENDALL-TAYLOR: That’s a great question and a hard one to answer. I mean, I think that there would be a case to be made that he would like nothing more than to see Donald Trump elected, in large part because he would diminish U.S. leadership on the global stage. And certainly top of his list is the NATO question, and this is a candidate who has threatened to pull the United States out of NATO, to reduce our role in Europe. Those are all goals and objectives that President Putin is trying to accomplish, and so in many ways, he’s likely to see Trump as doing some of the lifting for him.

SIMON: Andrea Kendall-Taylor, senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security. Thanks so much for joining us.

KENDALL-TAYLOR: Thank you for having me.

Copyright © 2024 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.