WASHINGTON—Today, the U.S. Helsinki Commission staff published a new report entitled, “Spotlight on the Shadow War: Inside Russia’s Attacks on NATO Territory.” Since the outset of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russian sabotage campaigns across North America and Europe have accelerated. Calculated campaigns of hybrid warfare show that Russia’s antagonistic foreign policy knows no bounds. In conjunction with its war in Ukraine, Russia is simultaneously executing a shadow war on NATO to destabilize, distress, and deter the transatlantic alliance from its staunch support of Ukrainian sovereignty.
The report builds on the Helsinki Commission’s September 2024 hearing, Russia’s Shadow War on NATO, in which experts testified to the widespread and calculated efforts Moscow deploys to destabilize its democratic adversaries across the Atlantic. To visualize the breadth of the Kremlin’s efforts, Helsinki Commission staff have mapped nearly 150 hybrid operations executed in NATO territory occurring since the outset of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine that have been attributed to or suspected of Russia. The identified hybrid operations fall into four categories: critical infrastructure attacks, violence campaigns, weaponized migration, and election interference and information campaigns.
Read the full report here.
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