Intelligence Scoop: Is Russia Preparing to Attack Europe?

The Rest Is Classified

The episode examines the recent escalation of Russian covert warfare and sabotage operations across Europe. The hosts detail specific incide

Key takeaways

• Russia is increasingly using cheap, disposable assets like criminals and social media recruits to conduct deniable sabotage.
• A drone carrying Semtex was discovered at Leipzig-Halle Airport, targeting Ukrainian logistics hubs.

Main topics

• Russian covert warfare
• Drone technology and sabotage

Notable quotes

Quantity has a quality all its own.

Conclusion

The episode warns that while a full-scale land war remains unlikely, t

Transcript preview

Speaker 3 (0:03) For exclusive interviews, bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, first look at live show tickets, a weekly newsletter, and discounted books, join the Declassified Club at therestisclassified.com. Speaker 3 (0:25) Drone attacks, sabotage, and assassination plots. In recent weeks, Russia's covert war with Europe has dramatically stepped up. But how far will it all go? And is this a dangerous escalation which might lead to war? Well, welcome to The Rest is Classified. I'm David McCloskey. And Speaker 4 (0:43) I'm Gordon Carrera. And we hope you're enjoying the Speaker 3 (0:46) series we have out now on Kim Philby. We're going to be releasing the second episode of that six-part series. on Monday. But a reminder, of course, that if you want all of them now, you can sign up to the Declassified Club at therestisclassified.com. But we wanted to bring you an episode on a slightly different topic, although still with nefarious Russians, Gordon. So, you know, there's always some commonalities. We want to talk today about what is currently happening between Russia and Europe. Now, we've heard about, we've talked a lot on this podcast. about Russian covert action, about Russian active measures in the US and in Europe. But in the last few weeks, I think it's fair to say it feels like something has changed and that we are now in a very dangerous period of escalation. If Speaker 4 (1:39) you just take August and September, we've had Germany accuse Russian spies of what could have been a spectacular sabotage attack. We've had the CIA director fly to Moscow with a warning. And we've had even America accusing Russian spies of planning assassinations within the US, as well as Poland's prime minister and foreign minister warning of potential drone or missile attacks on NATO and Europe. So there's definitely this sense, David, I think that things are running hot at the moment. And I've recently been out to the front line with Russia and have been talking to people inside Western intelligence agencies about the fears that Russia right now is... pushing the boundaries in a way which could escalate things dangerously. And whether that's going to lead to war, that's one of the questions we're going to look at as we take people really a bit behind the scenes of what's really going on. But first, a word from our sponsors at HP. Speaker 3 (2:39) This episode is brought to you by HP. In intelligence, you quickly learn that you are only as strong as the network around you. It's rarely a single major event that undermines an operation. It's the gaps between systems. That's Speaker 4 (2:52) where information leaks. It's the same in business. Leaders face a constant battle against strict timelines, mismatched tools, and the worry their security isn't as tight as they think it is. 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David, how much of your life do you reckon you've spent online? Well, just the best parts with you, Gordon. Well, David, NordVPN has actually mapped this out. And in the UK, we spend just over a... third of our lives online. That is 27 years. That's a whole parallel life that needs protecting. And that's where NordVPN comes in. Much more than just a VPN, they're built-in next-gen antivirus. acts as your first line of defence. To get our exclusive discount on your NordVPN plan, go to nordvpn.com slash rest is classified. It's risk-free with Nord's 30-day money-back guarantee. That's nordvpn.com slash rest is classified. And the link is in the episode description. Speaker 3 (4:53) So there have been some pretty notable and I must say pretty wild. events over the past few weeks that have or might prove extremely dangerous. Speaker 4 (5:04) That's right. And we're Speaker 3 (5:05) going Speaker 4 (5:05) to look in a bit of depth at some of those. I mean, one of the things that connects them is a lot of them involved drones and drone strikes. And there have been some really close calls. I mean, one involved. former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and former CIA Director David Petraeus. So September 13th, a Russian Geren-5 jet-powered drone strikes a passenger train. Now that train is in Ukraine, but it's right at the border with Poland, just two kilometres away from Polish and therefore NATO territory. And that is part of a new tactic of hitting trains, but it was really notable because of... the VIPs who were on the route that day and passing really close by. I Speaker 3 (5:50) guess it does raise the immediate question of, were the Russians actually trying to kill Petraeus or Boris Johnson? Or is it just sort of happenstance that they were on that train? Speaker 4 (6:03) Well, I think that is a good question. Petraeus himself said, I think that would have been unwise. Speaker 4 (6:10) Kind of very David Petraeus comment to try and kill a former CIA director. I mean, I think his point is it would have been unwise. It would have been very bold to try and actually kill those officials. But it may well have been that they knew that there were these officials passing through around that time. And they kind of wanted to send a message saying, we don't like you going into Ukraine. We know what you're doing. And we're going to hit a train nearby as a signal of that, as a kind of a warning. don't think they would have wanted to actually have killed a former CIA director or a former British prime minister. That would have been a really escalatory move. What do you think? Speaker 3 (6:49) Yeah, probably not. Although I think as we'll see, as we get deeper into this episode, the extent to which sort of old boundaries or red lines may have existed. I mean, it's a big open question. It's like, where are the boundaries now? Because you have this other significant incident, which we should talk about. which I don't think has gotten as much attention as the drone strike on the train. It's within Europe, it's in Germany, and it is a, you know, it's a clandestine operation that's actually commissioned by Russian military Speaker 4 (7:22) intelligence, the GRU. And this is, I think, a really interesting incident, which you're right, hasn't got the attention it deserves. So late in the evening, August the 4th, about 11.30pm, a bus driver... at Leipzig Halle Airport, which is in East Germany, spot something lying on the ground inside the secured apron area near the southern runway. And by one account, he actually goes up to whatever it is and he kind of kicks it or checks it out with his foot. Speaker 3 (7:52) Pokes it Speaker 4 (7:52) with a stick. Pokes it with a stick because it wasn't supposed to be there on the runway and it hadn't been spotted by any of the airport security systems. And it turns out... when they send a bomb disposal robot to look at it, that it's a drone. It's not like the drone that struck the train. It's not one of these big jet-powered drones. It's not that different from the kind of advanced drone you could buy commercially. Speaker 3 (8:18) It's an FPV. It's like a first-person view drone that you would have a headset on. And Speaker 4 (8:23) control. Speaker 3 (8:24) And fly. I mean, you can buy these commercially quite cheaply. Speaker 4 (8:29) Quadrocopter. Four rotors. Speaker 3 (8:30) Yeah, this is not a gigantic, you know, sort of... drone that actually looks like a plane. I mean, this is like a quadcopter type thing that you would see it, you could see in your neighborhood. Speaker 4 (8:39) Yeah, about the size of a microwave oven, but stripped of some of the lights and things which maybe helped it to move a bit more covertly. But the crucial thing when they look at it is they find it was carrying explosives, potentially in some kind of vegetable can. attached to the drone on a mount. Just a drone with a Speaker 3 (9:00) can of sweet potatoes fastened to it. Speaker 4 (9:03) Yeah. Yeah. But about six to 800 grams of military grade Semtex explosives. And crucially, this drone is found right next to a parked Antonov Ukrainian cargo aircraft. Now, Ukraine frequently uses this airport, Leipzig-Halle, as a logistical staging hub. for goods and equipment, including military goods, which are heading in for Ukraine. So they found this about 11.30. Then they start reviewing the security camera footage. And what they find out from that is that the drone had come into the airport very low, probably avoiding any radar coverage, at about 7.28 in the evening, before at 7.30 p.m., so just two minutes later, flying directly in. to the Antonov transport aircraft, striking the wing tank area, but then, crucially, falling to the ground without detonating. Speaker 3 (9:58) And in this case, the detonator fails to work properly. It seems that it was probably disconnected on impact. But the crucial bit is that that Antonov aircraft, which is a massive man. massive aircraft. I think it's, is it the largest cargo aircraft in the world? Speaker 4 (10:19) It's one of the big ones. Yeah. It's Speaker 3 (10:21) one of the big ones. It was fueled with 25,000 liters of kerosene. So had the drone detonated, the explosion would have been absolutely massive. And it not only would have destroyed the aircraft, but German security officials afterwards said this would have destroyed a significant piece Speaker 4 (10:42) of the airport itself. It would be massive. Massive. So the investigation clearly starts. They actually find another drone about 10 days later in a field near the airport, which looks similar. But it may have been that there were three drones that they were planning to use with a total of 1.8 kilograms of Semtex. But the fact that this one didn't blow up is crucial for the investigation because it means you've got something to work with and to examine. So inside it, they find two SIM cards. and a 4 or 5G phone router on the drone. Now this is really interesting I think because it means that the drone can communicate over a mobile phone network. So that's different from the radio frequency by which if you bought a commercial drone that you might use to control it because those radio frequencies for commercial drones are monitored and jammed near an airport. So the point is that this actually acts more like a mobile phone and a transmitter for a mobile phone. So it's much easier for it to escape those jamming attempts and means potentially you could control it from a great distance away, relaying a signal through an antenna and then into that router and onto the SIM cards to actually move the drone around rather than someone with a radio frequency nearby controlling it. Speaker 3 (12:02) I mean, as we'll see as we talk about who was behind this, this is going to be a massive problem forever because it's essentially like the same vulnerability that would be created if you're a sniper and you're trying to assassinate someone and you're close in proximity to the area, it creates a vulnerability, right, that you can't really overcome. In this case, you snap that because someone can emplace the drone, leave, and then someone elsewhere in Moscow or... Tehran or wherever it might be, can fly the thing and maneuver it. And the person, frankly, wouldn't even have to be witting of what they were doing, moving to a particular site. It's Speaker 4 (12:45) a big problem. And that's what I think is so interesting, because in this case, the police, the German investigators start searching the area and they think they find the place from which it was launched. It's a kind of abandoned area nearby to the airport. And witnesses actually hear an explosion 10 minutes prior to the drone striking the aircraft. And when police go to this place, they recover scorch metal, burn marks and antenna remnants around a tree, which looks like it was the local relay setup. So this looks like it might have been the launch site and the relay setup site, which was then destroyed and blown up once the drone was launched and someone could then control it remotely. So you still need that local bit of infrastructure to launch this drone, because this isn't a drone that can fly a long distance, and to set up this relay. But once you've done it, yeah, it can be controlled a long way away. So it looks like there was this external antenna, which was based in this abandoned site near the airport. And crucially, they find a discarded glove snagged onto the antenna hardware. They managed to match the DNA. to an existing suspect who the Finns and Lithuanians know about, who's a Belarusian known as Andrei, and who'd already come to the attention of the authorities for criminal offences and property crimes. And he, they work out, came into Germany from Latvia, it looks like, on July the 28th, so about a week before the drone was launched. And he looks to be the person who was... on the ground deploying it. Speaker 3 (14:28) This will be another theme of this episode, which is the, I think, increasing growing use of very disposable, cheap assets that are used by foreign intelligence services, often through cutouts and intermediaries, who quite