Shortly before Christmas, the new chief of [Secret Intelligence Service ] MI6, Blaise Metreweli, made her first public speech since taking charge. She chose as her subject the multifaceted threat posed by Russia, warning of the growing danger from Vladimir Putin’s regime. “We are operating in a space between peace and war,” she said.
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The picture Metreweli paints is frightening: a scenario not of overt military strikes, but of covert “grey zone” assaults from every angle. The spy chief did not go into detail. We are all aware of the existence of planned sabotage, assassinations, hacking, cyber crime and drone attacks. Such concepts are well aired and are firmly embedded in the public consciousness. Less familiar, however, according to security experts, is the notion of economic warfare. Key to this, to use their parlance, are non-state actors – not Russian diplomats or entities formally associated with the Russian state, but private individuals, organisations, movements and companies who secretly act in Russia’s interest.
Some are ideologically motivated, while others do it for money, frequently being paid in untraceable cryptocurrency, like Jan Marsalek. Austrian-born Marsalek was COO of Wirecard, the German payment processing firm that collapsed in 2020 after announcing that €1.9bn (£1.65bn) it supposedly held in cash did not in fact exist.
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For almost a decade prior to its insolvency, Marsalek had been working for the Russian security agency, the GRU. His position at Wirecard gave him access to data and resources that were useful to the Russians. He used his seniority to develop pro-Russian links in Libya, and to encourage a flood of migration to Europe that was calculated to cause social and financial damage – all playing into Moscow’s hands.
After his exposure, following Wirecard’s collapse, Marsalek fled to Russia. In late 2023, Marsalek was named again as the coordinator of a Bulgarian spy ring operating in the UK.
Another example is petty criminal Dylan Earl, the ringleader in an arson attack on a warehouse in east London stocked with aid for Ukraine in March 2024. He was also recruited online by the Russian paramilitary organisation known as the Wagner Group.
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Harder to crack are the Russians or non-Russians working in the commercial field, in strategic industries critical to Europe’s defence and infrastructure, such as defence and energy, and acting in Russia’s interests, often under orders from the GRU or other Kremlin agencies. Security sources maintain that Moscow considers these actors useful as there is a degree of separation: deniability is fundamental to the strategy.
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The difficulty of tracking such activity can be seen in the case of Alexander Kirzhnev. The Russian is wanted by the Supreme Anti-Corruption Court in Ukraine, having been accused in absentia of organising a fraud against Ukraine by using a bogus US company to fulfil an order for ammunition.
The Ukraine state-owned firm Artem placed a multimillion-dollar order for 152mm and 155mm shells with a supplier based in Florida. Advance payment was made. All seemed well: a US firm was helping Ukraine’s war effort, no problem there. The trouble was, the Florida company had no ability to fulfil the order.
By diverting precious Ukrainian cash, taking up their time and effort, and making them think much-needed military supplies were coming when they were not, Kirzhnev’s alleged actions – whether under instruction or not – epitomise Russia’s goals in the “grey zone”: deniable private-sector activity that moves the Kremlin closer to its strategic objectives, sowing uncertainty along the way.
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It's a bit more complicated than that. It's tempting to fixate on a simplification with one culprit to blame, but causality is rarely linear.
For instance, many Syrian refugees were fleeing Assad's brutal regime before it was toppled; Assad was being propped up by Iran. Afghan refugees were fleeing the Taliban. And while yes, there are historical factors that contributed to Assad, Khameni, and the Taliban being in power, and the West certainly doesn't have squeaky clean hands in those historical factors, it's not entirely the West's fault, either.
If you want to trace the origins of conflict back to the beginning, there's always one step further that you need to take in order to understand the set of circumstances that contributed to the particular tensions at play that gave rise to each conflict throughout history. Ultimately, there's been conflict in the region (and arguably all regions) since the dawn of civilization, and likely earlier too.
That's not a justification for colonialism, but let's not act like we would have world peace if only Europeans had decided to stay in Europe. A lot (not all) of what we call European colonialism in the Middle East began at the conclusion of WWI. There was no longer an Ottoman Empire, and after nearly five centuries of stability the region was suddenly thrust into a period of change and the potential for chaos. The victors had the responsibility to oversee a transition to a new system of governance. A lot of the results were less than ideal, but hindsight is 20/20. We can't say we would have made better decisions if we were in their shoes, limited to the knowledge that they had available to them at the time. Anyway, it's not like the Ottomans had been some egalitarian society that respected all people equally; even they had clearly defined hierarchies that were based on race and religion.
Most of the post-WWII involvement of the west in the Middle East was to combat the influence of the Soviet Union, which wouldn't have been any better. If Europe and the US had simply pulled out of the region, there would still have been a major colonialist/imperialist power in the Middle East, destabilizing civilizations and propping up puppet governments, perpetuating cycles of conflict and fueling the rise of armed militant groups, all resulting in mass displacements of people.
All in all, ethnic disputes have existed since the beginning of time, and while European colonialism may have exacerbated certain of these by placing their thumb on the scales for a period of time before suddenly removing it, let's not pretend it would all be sunshine and rainbows if they hadn't, either.
That doesn't justify conflict by any means. We should all strive for a world in which we can put away the conflicts of the past and move forward in an age of peace and cooperation. This herculean task would require us to have a comprehensive understanding of the origins of each conflict in the first place, and almost all of them go much further back than a cursory glance at 20th century history can reveal.
So I think it's also important to focus on the progress that societies have made, and acknowledge their contributions to the peace process as well.
While this is a fine and much more detailed response, I don’t appreciate you mischaracterizing my comment as fixated on a simplification with one culprit, when I explicitly provide 4 or 5 examples of causes, use modifiers like often and sometimes, and don’t specifically mention a region or group of migrants, as it is obviously a generalized introduction to the issue.
So much more exposition than comprehension or engagement. Carries the whiff of overeagerness to establish an agenda.