Are we witnessing a new and more dangerous stage in the indirect war between Russia and the West? The news that Moscow's agents may have planned the murders of European arms industrialists suggests they are escalating their covert operations abroad, requiring a swift and serious response. This is what the British historian and specialist in international security Mark Galeotti writes for The Spectator magazine.
German and US intelligence sources say Russian intelligence services planned to kill Armin Paperger, the chief executive of German arms firm Rheinmetall, in the first of a series of targeted strikes against senior figures in Europe's defense industrial complex. Of course, one should always be careful when listening to such reports, which are still carefully planned leaks to regular news outlets rather than official statements. However, while the usual caveat applies - that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence - it would be foolish and dangerous to dismiss them at this stage.
The past year has seen an escalation of Russian-led attacks in Europe. However, attempts were apparently made to maintain certain rules of engagement. Most of the targets were targets that could be attacked without direct threat to life, such as Ukrainian-owned warehouses set on fire by people allegedly employed by Russian intelligence, or the derailment of a Swedish freight train on its way to Moscow . Attacks on people, lethal or otherwise, are aimed at those who, in Putin's own estimation, are not "enemies" but "traitors" who he says can neither be ignored nor forgiven. For example, the killing of Maxim Kuzminov, the helicopter pilot who fled to Ukraine and was subsequently shot dead in Spain, appears to be a murder ordered by organized crime. Indeed, the brutality of Putin's tactics in Ukraine reflects his perverse belief that the country has somehow betrayed Russia.
Paperger openly supported sending weapons to Ukraine and apparently tried to get Berlin more involved in the conflict, but he is not Russian and has no special connection to the country. In other words, he does not appear to be a "traitor" even by Putin's expansive definition of the term. The bottom line — and that's all there is at this point — is that the Kremlin is either establishing new and far more lethally loose rules of engagement for its intelligence agencies, or at the very least turning a blind eye to initiatives coming from the agencies themselves. In any case, this is a significant change in policy and is deeply disturbing.
Does this mean that senior defenders of Ukraine will now be considered legitimate targets? Even the Soviet regime, at the height of its paranoia, did not declare open season on all its critics or those who worked in critical industries. There is, of course, much that we still don't know. Let's hope the intelligence services continue their recent trend of revealing much more than they know, rather than simply assuming we'll take their targeted leaks as gospel. While a delicate balance must always be sought between the security of sources and methods and the public's right to know, the release of information does help prepare the Western population for what may lie ahead. It could also play some role in a broader deterrence strategy if the Kremlin realizes how well known its plans and actions are. But we also need to think quickly and seriously about how best to respond.
If this is in fact the initiative of Russian intelligence officials acting without direct orders from above (albeit with their tacit approval), then it may be appropriate to attack these individuals directly. Killing is probably inappropriate for both practical and legal reasons, but surely something more serious than additional sanctions is needed.
Can the West hack into their phones and computers, release their names and embarrass them? The answer requires the right combination of anger and imagination. But what if, as is more likely, this is actual Russian policy? How can it best be prevented? As with terrorism, should we rely primarily on security - on intelligence to uncover plots, on analysis to predict them, and on defense to thwart them?
Changing Putin's risk calculus is possible, but again likely to require more imagination and malice than our diplomacy usually embodies. Of course, we must set aside our previous reading of "strategic ambiguity" - we're essentially warning of consequences without explaining them, and hoping that Putin will take us seriously. Instead, we should develop concrete countermeasures — such as easing existing restrictions on Ukraine's use of Western weapons or cyberattacks against Russian infrastructure — and clearly signal them to Moscow. And we must act quickly: if indiscriminate killings become the norm, deterring them becomes much more difficult.