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Kremlin’s sex toy sabotage campaign is just the beginning

From Russia with love. Credit: Getty

November 5, 2024 - 6:30pm

When sexual aids spontaneously burst into flame, one does not automatically assume it to be the work of Vladimir Putin. However, that is the prospect now being considered by Western security officials, who believe that two electric massagers which ignited in logistics hubs in Germany and the UK back in July were in fact part of a wider Russian sabotage operation. The European erotic gadget inferno was, they suspect, a “practice run” aimed at ultimately placing similar incendiary devices aboard cargo or even passenger aircraft flying to the US and Canada.

Although downing a passenger plane would constitute a dramatic escalation for Russian spies, it would not be wholly out of character. While the Kremlin has run cyber and information warfare campaigns for years, there has been a recent upsurge in acts of physical sabotage conducted on the soil of Western nations by Moscow’s locally engaged proxies.

In July, the US foiled a Russian plot to assassinate the chief executive of German arms manufacturer Rheinmetall, apparently as punishment for the firm’s role in providing weapons to Ukraine. More recently, Germany, Sweden and Finland have reported break-ins at water treatment plants, with residents forced to boil drinking water for fear of contamination. Meanwhile, targets for defacement and arson in the Baltic states have included Latvia’s Occupation Museum and — suggesting a saboteur with a very specific grudge — a Lithuanian branch of IKEA.

Western governments have not been shy in calling this out. At a July Nato meeting, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken described sabotage attacks as “a deliberate strategy by Russia to try to undermine our security and undermine the cohesion of the Alliance”. Last month, MI5 Director-General Ken McCallum claimed that Moscow’s military intelligence unit, the GRU, is “on a sustained mission to generate mayhem on British and European streets”, including arson and sabotage “conducted with increasing recklessness”.

The question remains, however, as to why Moscow is intensifying its activities now. The overall goal is likely to degrade Western support for Ukraine by making it costly for their citizens, who are then expected to pressure their leaders to halt vital supplies of weaponry to Kyiv. There is an additional psychological element, as Western populations will feel increasingly vulnerable to the long arm of the Kremlin, thereby reducing trust in their own governments.

Worryingly, this may aim not just to sow discord now but to lay the foundations for actual warfare. Last month Bruno Kahl, the head of Germany’s foreign intelligence service, warned that “direct military confrontation with Nato has become an option for Moscow” and that Russia’s military will likely be more prepared to attack the rest of Europe later this decade. In that context, sabotage now is potentially intended to increase fear of Moscow among Western civilians and divide them from their governments in anticipation of actual conflict.

There are also the GRU’s internal dynamics to consider. The organisation suffered operational setbacks when Russian intelligence officers were expelled en masse from Western embassies after the Ukraine invasion. However, spies have now regrouped and are eager to prove their value to the Kremlin after their intelligence failures in February 2022 helped turn a three-day operation into a two-and-a-half-year war. SIS Chief Sir Richard Moore claimed in September that the “Russian intelligence services have gone a bit feral”, and Western intelligence officials suspect that Russian spies may have been overstepping the limits established by the Kremlin with this latest plot.

Yet the ramifications of setting a passenger plane ablaze are such that the GRU is unlikely to have even entered the planning stage without the Kremlin’s full approval. What’s more, flagrant sabotage supports Moscow’s political objectives and gives the Kremlin a valuable tool for manipulating the West. Washington recently backed away from permitting Kyiv to strike military targets inside Russia after American intelligence agencies assessed that Russia could respond with increased acts of arson and sabotage as well as lethal attacks on US and European military bases.

The sum of all this is that the West will struggle to deter Russia. The attribution necessary for sanctioning is difficult, and individual acts of sabotage do not meet the threshold for invoking Nato’s Article 5 mutual defence clause. Telegram accounts promoted by pro-Kremlin social media feeds prove an easy method for Moscow to recruit willing proxies to conduct sabotage abroad, with the West seemingly lacking the capacity or political ruthlessness to conduct similar operations in Russia. All that is left to punish Moscow is to publicly call out such activities which, by raising local awareness of this new cost of supporting Ukraine, does the Kremlin’s work for it. Moscow’s sabotage campaign is likely just getting started.


Bethany Elliott is a writer specialising in Russia and Eastern Europe.

BethanyAElliott

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Michael Lipkin
Michael Lipkin
1 month ago

“The overall goal is likely to degrade Western support for Ukraine by making it costly for their citizens, who are then expected to pressure their leaders to halt vital supplies of weaponry to Kyiv” Could be, but also it could be that our citizens are bored and looking for a fight so as to create unity.

Carlos Danger
Carlos Danger
1 month ago

This article about a Russian sabotage campaign involving sex toys. Oliver Bateman’s article two days ago about the killing of P’Nut the squirrel. These articles aren’t journalism, they’re thinly researched and weakly argued blog posts, sensationalized to get clicks.

Devin B
Devin B
1 month ago
Reply to  Carlos Danger

I would argue that Russia sending incendiary aboard planes destined for the U.S. and Canada is actual news and is worthy of proper journalistic coverage. It’s easy to extrapolate this to Russia downing a passenger plane at some point.
I agree on the squirrel thing, though – any serious journalist should have ignored it as a distraction and moved on.

Martin Goodfellow
Martin Goodfellow
1 month ago
Reply to  Carlos Danger

Are you a GRU agent? How much are they paying you to promote their line of propaganda?

Lancashire Lad
Lancashire Lad
1 month ago

It’s time to deploy our blow up dolls.

Geoff W
Geoff W
1 month ago
Reply to  Lancashire Lad

The Russians’ blow-up dolls might be more of a threat, given that each one has a smaller blow-up doll inside it, which has a smaller blow-up doll inside it, which has…

Lindsay S
Lindsay S
1 month ago
Reply to  Geoff W

Truly a cluster f*ck

Derek Smith
Derek Smith
1 month ago
Reply to  Lancashire Lad

I’m reminded of that episode of ‘Only Fools and Horses’.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
1 month ago

This article seems to have been written with an eye toward showing viewers how dangerous Russia is, but to me the whole thing falls rather flat.

If the best stuff that Russian black-ops have to their credit is a failed assassination attempt on some German guy who doesn’t even work for the government, and a couple of incendiary sex toys which (unlike Israel’s baddass exploding pagers) don’t seem to have done any real damage, then my takeaway from it all is that Russia is deeply unserious.

Ever since the Russian invasion of Ukraine stalled and a war against a much smaller enemy, that should have taken a few weeks, dragged out into this multi-year struggle with Russia taking more casualties than Ukraine, I’ve come to see the Vladimir Putin’s presidency as a regrettable failure. It’s true that Putin’s goal of national rejuvenation is laudable, it’s true that many of his criticisms of the West are true, and it’s true that the Americans needlessly stirred up trouble in Ukraine with the 2004 and 2014 coups. And yet.

Putin has not shown himself to be the strong leader that Russia needed for these times. He is a weak and at times cruel man who has just led his country deeper into decline, as I’ve argued at length here:

https://twilightpatriot.substack.com/p/a-failed-bismarck-and-his-barbarians

I wish I didn’t have to say this, since the West has problems too, and Russians are right to love their country and to want to make a stand for Christian civilization. But Putin is nowhere close to being the kind of statesman who can pull it off.

Chris Whybrow
Chris Whybrow
1 month ago

If they go to war with us, we’ll win. It won’t even be close. So don’t worry about it. Russia is too poor and too weak to be a real threat.

Rob N
Rob N
1 month ago
Reply to  Chris Whybrow

If they go to war they won’t be alone!

Martin M
Martin M
1 month ago
Reply to  Chris Whybrow

You may be right, but we should take every opportunity to make them even poorer and weaker than they are now.

J Bryant
J Bryant
1 month ago

We’ve seen how our own Western governments and news media have repeatedly lied to us about Russia, Ukraine, covid, Harris, Trump, Biden, etc, etc.
Is it possible that this latest story is more US government-sponsored disinformation about Russia?
Just to be clear, I believe Putin is ruthless and would down a Western passenger liner if he thought it would help his war effort. I’m just not convinced the latest reports about bomb-laden s*x toys are entirely trustworthy.

ChilblainEdwardOlmos
ChilblainEdwardOlmos
1 month ago
Reply to  J Bryant

Spot on.

Martin M
Martin M
1 month ago
Reply to  J Bryant

Yeah. They are probably no more real than those stories about bomb laden pagers in Lebanon.

Francis Turner
Francis Turner
1 month ago

Bewarea Katie Price!

Martin M
Martin M
1 month ago

I don’t think it is enough for Western countries to simply expel Russian Intelligence Officers. I think they should be looking to expel all Russian citizens, and not let any more in except in very strict circumstances.