Russia’s conflict with Ukraine is just a minor aspect of an enormously larger war. Russia’s hybrid war has reached far beyond traditional battlefields, extending long distances across Europe, North America, and even the Arctic. It’s not just tanks and missiles; this is a high-tech, multi-faceted campaign of subversion, cyber attacks, disinformation, and sabotage to target Western infrastructure, governments, and society. As NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte recently noted, Russia is waging an escalating campaign of hybrid aggression on allied territory, interfering with democracies, dismantling industry, and engaging in acts of violence. Hybrid warfare is not new.
During the Cold War, the Soviet Union had mastered “active measures”—surreptitious operations to destabilize, manipulate, and disrupt opponents short of initiating open war. These had included disinformation operations, proxy support, targeted assassinations, and economic coercion. Russia has now updated these to the cyber age and is matching them with good old-fashioned military power and cyber warfare, information warfare, and economic coercion. The goal is the same: destabilize one’s enemies from the inside, confuse them, and not resort to overt combat that would trigger a NATO reaction. Hybrid warfare is defined by NATO analysts as the coordinated use of armed and unarmed instruments—everything from cyberwar to energy manipulation—to pursue strategic objectives with the option of credibly denying that they are doing so. Russia’s response is to heavily depend on hybrid warfare since it does not have a chance of competing on equal terms with NATO’s military and economic influence.
Moscow instead takes advantage of weaknesses, spreads dissonance, and dismantles cohesiveness in the West. The Kremlin’s Primakov Doctrine-guided approach is an attempt to restore international Russian leadership through challenging Western hegemony and advocating for a multipolar international order. Hybrid warfare is also a response to the perceived Western inroads, such as NATO expansion and the promotion of democratic values. Through the destruction of critical infrastructure, manipulation of the opinion space, and backing of anti-establishment forces, Russia tries to undermine Western will and generate strategic space for itself to operate. The weapons Russia utilizes are various and increasingly advanced.
Sabotage and subversion have spread in the last decade to reach into transport networks, government facilities, and key sites as varied as pipelines and defense factory plants. Explosives and incendiaries, and even basic mechanical devices, have been utilized to destroy railways, threaten shipping, and detonate undersea cables. Central to this are the computer attacks that can destroy communications, disable public services, and unsettle faith in government. Disinformation campaigns are launched via state media, social media, and friendly influencers, splitting societies and eroding support for nations that ally themselves with Ukraine. Economic coercion, especially via the sale of energy, is still a powerful tool, pulling on residual vulnerabilities as the continent continues to diversify supply. Russia’s intelligence services—the GRU, SVR, FSB, and the specialist communities such as GUGI—are the target of this covert war, supported by non-state forces and local proxies.
They have recourse to criminal networks, cyber specialists, and mercenary troops for sabotage, espionage, and cyber assaults. GRU Unit 29155 has been alleged to execute poisonings, plots for assassinations, and covert sabotage in Europe, whereas cyber units such as Fancy Bear and Sandworm are engaged in cyber disruption. Russia operates a “shadow fleet” of merchant ships with ambiguous ownership that has been employed for underwater vandalism and sanctions-busting. Proxy and mercenary forces, meanwhile, enable Russia to project power and intervene in crises from Eastern Europe to Syria, using military force supported by propaganda and political pressure. Russia’s hybrid campaigns specifically target assets with the intent of maximizing disruption.
Transportation networks like shipping routes, trains, and airplanes are prime targets, cutting off supply lines and logistics. Submarine fiber-optic cables and pipelines are especially exposed, potentially paralyzing communications and energy. There have been bombings and fires in defense supply facilities that ship military supplies to Ukraine, attempts at intimidation or murder of government officials, journalists, and defectors. Even the weaponization of migrants has been cited as a destabilizing strategy along frontiers. The most impacted are Ukraine’s backers, highlighting both the human and strategic nature of Russia’s covert war. A very sensitive arena is beneath the seas.
More than 95 percent of global data travels through submarine fiber-optic cables, providing the digital spine to contemporary life. They carry everything from military communications to banking transfers and are therefore central weak points. Russian spy ships and naval spy ships, ranging from specialty spy ships to submarines, have been seen near cable routes, with the capabilities of cutting or tapping these vital connections. Because it is a continental power, Russia is less reliant on these cables itself and therefore more likely to take advantage of the vulnerabilities of the competition. Tampering with such cables may destabilize entire economies, communications systems, and even military operations. The West has counterattacked threats with measures such as sharing intelligence, stepped-up surveillance, and hardening key infrastructure.
NATO has stepped in to guard pipelines and underwater cables, and the European Union has created task forces to coordinate efforts at resilience. That is not sufficient, however. Russia is not much held back from hybrid attacks and has no hesitation in escalating them. Most Western political leaders are still afraid of provoking a full-scale conflict by taking more powerful countermeasures.
Experts contend that more powerful measures must be employed, ranging from targeted cyber operations, sanctions, information operations, and attacks on the shadow fleet and Russian energy targets to increase the cost of hybrid aggression. In the years to come, Russia’s hybrid war changes and takes advantage of new weaknesses, new technologies, and new proxies.
The spread of AI, extension of subsea cables, and growing involvement of non-state actors introduce complexity. Western countries need to adjust, developing resilience in the infrastructure, regulating more effectively, and forging public-private partnerships to link up strategic assets. The task is not merely military—it is political, economic, and social. As borders between the virtual and the physical disappear through contest, anticipation, detection, and response to hybrid threats will define the transatlantic security future.
An understanding of the shadow war waged by Russia is not only important to military strategists but to anyone wishing to understand how contemporary conflict is remodeling societies, economies, and international power relations.