Proxies deploying tactics including migrant smuggling in destabilisation efforts across EU, enforcement agency finds

Summary

Europol reports that Russia and other state actors are using criminal networks to conduct sabotage, cyber-attacks, and migrant smuggling to destabilize the EU.

The agency’s 2025 threat assessment describes a “shadow alliance” where criminals act as proxies for state-backed hybrid threats. Recent attacks, including arson in Lithuania and Poland, have been linked to Russian intelligence.

Officials warn of ongoing security risks, including AI-driven cybercrime.

Europol says these tactics aim to weaken institutions through persistent disruptions rather than large-scale attacks.

  • Lka1988@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    201·
    16 days ago

    Can someone just fucking kill Putin already? I’ve had enough of this asshole’s pot-stirring bullshit.

    • Paragone@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      14 days ago

      Last century I read part of a CIA manual on operating in foreign-countries…

      it insisted that doing things through local-organized-crime was ideal, as

      • they get the blame/credit
      • everything is deniable
      • it can be run as a profitable operation
      • none of “our” people ( I’m Canadian, not US-ian ) get front-line risks
      • etc…

      So, Russia & the US both use the same manual then?

      Who’s the Good Guys, if everybody is doing this, this way??

      Machiavellianism wins, doesn’t it?

      Unfortunately, yes, it does.

      I happen to want NONmachiavellianism winning, permanently, from now on.

      got no traction, for that, though…

      not yet, anyways…

      maybe if we dig-in, & work, & work, & work, for years, maybe future-generations can have the world we could have made…

      _ /\ _

      • Paragone@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        14 days ago

        PS: Russia’s been acting to increase the refugee-loading on Europe as a destabilizing-method, for … decades now??

        This isn’t new.

        The intensity may be new, but now he’s closer to winning the butchering of Europe, so this is to be expected…

  • jmd_akbar@aussie.zoneEnglish
    7·
    16 days ago

    They don’t need any other criminal network - they have the best network in the White House now…

  • kingofras@lemmy.worldEnglish
    6·
    16 days ago

    If he goes asymmetric, we go asymmetric. Let see how well his corrupt apparatus will identify a single Western operative. Not that hard to get a sniper rifle in Russia on the black market. Heck, the Russian black market is so ubiquitous I’m sure you could easily find a replacement president too.