The Cold War-era playbook.
Today we can call all Russian intelligence services and security services “Russian intelligence services”. The GRU, SVR, and FSB are all the same.
Covert action and hybrid operations against Europe are real. They are not coming next year. They are here. Those operations include fake news. They include sabotage. And those things include assassinations. Today, Putin and his staff are following the Cold War playbook. In that era, the KGB and its satellite services recruited far-wing Marxists and even regular criminals to their cooperatives. Those intelligence services provided weapons and other equipment. They also provided training.
To their operatives. The KGB and its allied services also offered safe places for those people who worked for radical Marxist groups.
Sometimes the motivation for those actions was arson, propaganda, and even political murders. There were also many types of psychological operations. The KGB and its fellow organizations used agent provocatéurs to provoke violence in anti-NATO demonstrations. That gave martyrs to those movements. If. Some well-known people’s friends were killed in those demonstrations. That could be an introduction to police violence. The demonstrations were against Euro-missiles. And the problem was that things like Soviet missiles were completely lost.
And people who talked against communist ideology were marked as fascists and nazis. The idea was that demonstrations seemed to come from domestic actors. The idea was to tell politicians. That. The people were against NATO.
That was a tool. To drive political decisions. Things like the Panama Papers were an information operation. The target was political leaders. The idea was that this kind of embarrassing information could make those political leaders. To make laws that allow censorship.
Sometimes Marxism was not the motivator. It was money or drugs. Marxism was only a cover-up. It was something. That covered the fact: the KGB ordered political murders. The KGB and its allied services targeted people to those actors.
The KGB knew. Everybody. Those with backgrounds in Warsaw Pact countries were suspicious. They tried to recruit people with no visible connections to Eastern Europe. Recruitment happened by contacting interesting persons. The KGB tried to find out what those people needed. If. They needed money. The KGB tried to find out where they needed money. They could offer drugs. If. The person had a problem with drugs or alcohol. They offered anabolic steroids for sportsmen. They could make their results better.
They also tried to blackmail people. If. A person had a background in the East. Their family members who lived in the East could be arrested. Or they could vanish. And the secret police representative said that if a person cooperated. That could help their family members' position. The KGB searched for people who worked in places like research laboratories for their contacts.
The Eastern intelligence made a list of how useful each person could be.
1) People who worked in intelligence. Or. Whose family members worked in intelligence. Or. In authorities who cooperate with intelligence.
2) People who worked in military HQ.
3) People who worked in the military industry.
4) People who have access to Western technology.
5) Political influencers. They can be members of parliament. Royal family members, rock stars. Or today, social media influencers.
6) Today, cooperatives can establish companies that allow them to buy drones. Or open accounts on social media platforms. Or they can open access to AI tools.
KGB and today's FSB use influencers. Like journalists and other well-known people. To change one's mind. They were primary targets for recruiters. The KGB also searched for other influencers. Who wanted to cooperate. The Marxists instructed them to recruit wealthy people into their groups. The most wanted contacts were “useful idiots”. Wealthy kids without training are dream targets for those recruiters.
Today, the Russian government follows that playbook. They choose local operatives as contacts. Those contacts can be MC gangs, drug addicts, or organized crime. And then the Russian intelligence starts to support them. The cooperatives get drugs, guns, and other tools. Local operatives can get their equipment and other stuff from Russian ghost ships. Drones transport weapons and drugs. And there were suspicions that the KGB sold drugs to fund their covert operations.
Russian intelligence gives instructions on how to use those tools. Those local actors can carry out sabotage. They can shoot power lines. They can break into people´s homes. So. The actor. Who. Makes those dirty tricks. Is not necessarily Russian. That actor can be a local person who has never visited Russia.
The dirtiest tricks can be violent actions where Russian intelligence uses captured NATO weapons. Or they can use captured Ukrainian drones. Electronic warfare forces those drones down. They can be reprogrammed. And. Russians can use them against Western targets. They could detonate trucks that carry explosives.
Sabotage can involve things like false-flag attacks. It can involve things. Like. Complaints against defense industry investments. And it can involve things like drone attacks against explosive material storage and manufacturing plants. We ask, where is the limit? How far can the FSB go? We can remember things like the Polonium murder. And another case. It was the Salisbury poison attack. Those things were demonstrations. There, the line was not. Those cases were only the tip of the iceberg. There were cases. There, a person was detected. Photographing military targets. When security came. Those. Suspected spies sprayed them. Using some neurotoxin. The purpose of those actions is simple. They must demonstrate that nobody is safe. They demonstrate what happens if people dare to resist Vladimir Putin.
The last cases were drone observations near airfields in Western Europe. There were cases in Leipzig where an explosive-carrying drone dropped to an airfield near an An-126 strategic military transporter. There was Semtex in that drone. The problem is that. Local actors can carry those drones near their targets. They can be remotely controlled from ships and aircraft. Or the control system can be on a flat. The controller can operate those drones over the internet. The control station must only be connected to the internet socket.
The game is dirty. When a Russian agent, Vadim Krasikov, is arrested for murder. The FSB arrested a U.S. reporter. And then introduced a person swap. Krasikov returned to Russia. That person returned as a hero. And Vladimir Putin himself gave a medal. To. His hitman. Who shot his victim using a silenced Glock pistol.
Russians use social media as an information channel. They use social media influencers as information agents. And the problem is that When. False news is released. Its. Hard to remove. Russian web influencers. They can attract especially youngsters to their channels. And then those people start to spread propaganda to them. The propaganda involves things like news about U.S. military personnel crimes in Japan. Those tales can be true. But the problem is that. Those news stories forget everything else. If. Some European tourist kills a prostitute. That will not bring any headlines.
When we think about the illegal agents. They. Need deep backgrounds.
Russian intelligence used people with Brazilian backgrounds. This is alarming. It´s not the same as making a false ID for bar evening. Than. Making real identities. It is completely different. That identity allows people to open bank accounts. A real identity requires a lot of work. But if the agent has that kind of identity. That offers a good tool. To establish companies. Those companies open a path to Western AI tools. And Russian intelligence can use those language models remotely. Today there are thousands of web strikes a week. Russian cyber warfare against Europe accelerates. And that continues. As. Long as. The security service has its position in Russia. This means that removing Putin is not the same as something changing.
https://www.dw.com/en/germany-leipzig-explosive-drone-new-level-of-danger-minister/live-78241747
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/vadim-krasikov-russian-hitman-sprung-german-jail-prisoner-swap-2024-08-01/
https://news.sky.com/story/russians-and-ukrainian-held-over-alleged-spying-activities-at-albanian-military-plant-12678220
https://theins.press/en/politics/267601
https://tvpworld.com/86886320/international-counterintelligence-operation-unmasks-russian-spies-with-brazilian-identities
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Leipzig_Airport_drone_attack
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_of_Alexander_Litvinenko
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_of_Sergei_and_Yulia_Skripal
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vadim_Krasikov












