Russia has waged a sustained campaign of sabotage across the European Union since launching its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, executing 110 separate operations on EU soil in just three and a half years. The data, compiled by the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism and GLOBSEC and featured prominently in a new PISM report on Baltic security, reveals that 89 of these operations succeeded while 21 were foiled by security services.
As "Hvylya" reports, citing the Polish Institute of International Affairs analysis, more than half of all incidents - 59 in total - took place in Baltic Sea Region countries. Poland bore the heaviest burden with 20 recorded cases, followed by Germany and Estonia with 11 each, Lithuania with 9, Latvia with 3, Sweden and Finland with 2 apiece, and Denmark with 1.
The range of operations documented in the report spans from relatively low-level vandalism to sophisticated assassination plots. Arson and explosive attacks were the most common category at 34 incidents, followed by vandalism at 27, sabotage at 21, and public disorder at 20. Among the most serious cases were foiled preparations to assassinate Armin Papperger, director of Rheinmetall, and an attempt to kill Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the airport in Rzeszow, Poland - both uncovered in April 2024.
The sabotage campaign has extended into critical infrastructure and the military domain. In March 2025, power cables supplying Gotland's pump system in Sweden were damaged. In November 2025, railway tracks between Warsaw and Lublin were blown up. The German Navy was hit twice in February 2025 - saboteurs damaged the propulsion system of the corvette Emden at a Hamburg shipyard and contaminated the water system aboard the frigate Hessen.
The PISM report notes that these incidents "commonly intensify at times when NATO countries are discussing aid to Ukraine." By signaling readiness to escalate and extend the conflict to countries supporting Kyiv, Russia aims to pressure Alliance members against supplying further advanced weaponry. In October 2024, authorities broke up a network preparing incendiary attacks on planes carrying parcels from Lithuania, Poland, Germany, and the UK to North America.
The report's authors warn that Russia's hybrid operations in the Baltic Sea Region represent a deliberate strategy to "gradually erode security in the region and undermine allied solidarity," making them a direct precursor to potential military escalation rather than merely isolated criminal acts.
Also read: Secret Moves Before the Munich Conference: How FT Tracked Russian Spying in Real Time.