The Spy War in Europe

there's a hidden spy war between the East and West that's heating up and it's unlike anything we've seen since the Cold War Russian spies have become increasingly Brazen recruiting a small army in Europe for arson assassinations disinformation campaigns and sabotage Yan stolzenberg Secretary of NATO had this to say at the NATO Summit in Washington what I can say is that we have seen a pan a Russian campaign organized by their security services uh to conduct hostile actions against NATO allies across the alliance their goal is to undermine Ukraine's war efforts and reduce their International support

I want to know how successful have they been and what are NATO countries doing to counter these attacks after Russia's initial invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 European governments collectively ejected 600 individuals who were officially diplomats all of whom were suspected of being Russian spies many of whom were working at embassies and highlevel government positions they were all ejected out of Europe Russia did the same exact thing with ejecting several us Personnel from the embassies in Moscow embassies are often hot beds for Espionage and spy activity evidence that the initial Purge of Russian agents was

effective comes from the BND that's Germany's foreign intelligence agency they claim that recruiting a new person to spy in Europe now cost the Kremlin about $430,000 to incentivize them to take such a high risk of being captured that's 12 times what my CIA Handler pays me over the course of the last 2 years the Russian FSB has cobbled together enough capability to attempt one of I think their most risky missions in recent history this is the CEO of German defense company Ry matal his name is Armen pager now in early July 2024 the United States

government claimed that they had helped foil a plot by the Kremlin to assassinate him rhy is one of Germany's largest defense firms and one of the main companies producing 155 artillery shells and armored vehicles sent to Ukraine they also plan to open an armored vehicle production facility on Ukrainian soil in the next few weeks that's a first an action that represents a major escalation of their support but first I want to tell you about this video sponsor PDS debt pretty much everyone knows how easy it is to get into debt but the toughest part is

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west and the Soviet Union they were intense but assassination attempts on high-profile industrial leaders that was relatively rare assassination attempts on heads of state wasn't unheard of but most operations focused on Gathering intelligence rather than targeted killings can't we have a little decorum in the Cutthroat world of spies and if paper had been killed he would have been replaced the next day and operations would have continued for ryal so what's the point of such a mission it's about creating fear and uncertainty among the leadership of defense companies all across Europe especially smaller ones think about

it if you're an executive at a defense firm and you hear that your peer was just taken out by Russian agents you might start to reconsider how aggressively support Ukraine or maybe you would double down support and that's what we in the business call blowback it can also throw the company into disarray And Delay projects what we have seen of the last months is that NATO allies have not been intimidated NATO allies are actually stepping up their support delivering more Aid to support to Ukraine but you're about to find out this is just the tippy

toop Iceberg of the Spy War it's easy to forget what intelligence consists of luck and speculation it's important for us to keep in mind some perspective on this the Spy V spy world is a two-way street take a look at this tweet from the American CIA written in Russian and it says why I contacted the CIA for the sake of the motherland the CIA produced video attached to that tweet is meant to appeal to Russian intelligence workers who might want to do a little flippy floppy on who signs their paychecks and funnel them Intel to

the CIA according to the CIA director William Burns the Vagner coup attempt against Putin about a year ago led to this that disaffection creates a once in a generation opportunity for us at CIA we're not letting it go to waste these videos and efforts by the the CIA spies are trying to exploit the intelligence failures that led to many of the problems faced by Russia in the early days of the war they're hopings some of them might feel betrayed enough to go to the CIA as informant one of the most infamous cases of this actually

working kind of to some degree comes from the story of Maxim kuimov now kuimov was a Russian mi8 helicopter pilot who in the summer of 2023 took off from an Airfield in KK on a routine cargo Mission he's a Russian uh Aviation pilot and he used the opportunity to slip over the Ukrainian border where he was met by a member of the Ukrainian intelligence group they had pre-planned this and he knew that he was going to defect so when he defected to Ukraine he brought along with him a stack of secret War documents he also

was paid about $500,000 half a million bucks which I'm sure made the decision a little easier for him now kumanov went on to conduct a series of interviews condemning the war and explaining why he decided to effect saying quote I understand who is on the side of good and who is on the side of Truth the head of Russia's intelligence agency Sergey nishin was not cool with this kumanov was staying at a Resort Village in southern Spain how he was tracked down was not clear but he reportedly frequented local bars that were popular with Russian

clientele drove around in a luxury car and he lavishly spent the half a million bucks given to him by the Ukrainian government the area was also known as a Hotpot of Russian organized crime and gang activity on the 13th of February two men shot and killed kumanov putting Six Bullets into him before quickly re-entering their own vehicle and running over him as they escaped Spanish intelligence quickly blamed the Kremlin for the actions on their soil and while Russia never officially acknowledged the assassination Sergey narkin responded afterwards that kumanov was a quote moral corpse that's a

quote from him so he neither confirmed nor denied their involvement but all the signs pointed to them welcome to my barely credible spy briefing please take a seat for a slide as Timothy points out here I believe the Kremlin is already in a hybrid war with NATO and the EU but they purposely keep their attacks just under the threshold of NATO's Article 5 so as to avoid a full-blown case of War take a look at this map here it has a list of Russian spy acts of sabotage throughout all of Europe we can see opposition

protests are being sponsored in movia targeted beatings of Russian opposition leaders in laia Leonid Vulcan lives here in Exile and an attacker sprayed him with tear gas and hit him over the head with a hammer trying to kill him coincidence I think not next slide but I want to draw your attention to the problem of signals jamming GPS signal jamming is happening throughout the Baltic states which I believe is being conducted from Russia's sandwich territory in krad this is worse than just being forced to go back to printing out maps on map quest this is

dangerous because it also shuts down GPS capabilities for military and civilian aircraft as well as ships which depend on GPS to safely navigate Russian agents accomplish this by essentially blasting a powerful signal to interfere it's like yelling into a loudspeaker to drown everything else out so far this is just a pain in the butt because there is backup systems but car Giles director of the conflict studies Research Center said that he believes this is Russia testing the ability of Europe testing them to see if they can completely shut down air traffic TR and missile strikes

in the future now next slide last slide sorry have you heard of Russia's grw unit 29155 they're the FSB unit behind sabotage and hacking throughout y of Europe they've operated in secret since at least 2008 but its existence only became publicly known in 2019 they have one job destabilize Europe they wake up and they think about destabilizing Europe they have lunch they think about destabilizing Europe and they go to dead dreaming about destabilizing Europe unit 29155 was allegedly behind the 2016 coup plot in Montenegro to assassinate the Prime Minister and why were they doing this

it was an attempt to stop them from joining NATO at the time this failed ultimately but the list goes on they tried to poison a former Russian intelligence officer on UK soil bellingcat is the top open- Source intelligence team on this topic they figured out that travel data of grew officers in and out of Bulgaria lined up with a series of mysterious explosions at weapon facilities in 2015 coincidence I think not 29155 is the team that conduct cyber attacks that have cost billions of dollars in damage so if you take anything away from this barely

credible defense briefing it's that Warfare has changed it looks very different today spy Fair has changed as well in the Modern Age of technologically advanced systems what took a bomb 30 years ago now takes a few clicks of a button to do just as much damage and I'm not convinced that we we found a good way to fight back against it yet Russia's trend on political assassinations has been the uh not so subtle approach in an effort to use them as messages to those who would betray the Kremlin Kumo's death Echoes the style of previous

killings such as the attempted poisoning of survey seapal in 2018 in England were the string of Russian oligarchs who um mysteriously fell out of Windows to their demise since the outbreak of the war but one of the main styles of the attacks that's been a running theme that I've noticed in the past year has been arson strikes by Russian operatives the M Mo across the board is a Russian Handler enlists the help of regular people in like Poland Germany the UK for example and they get them to commit these acts sometimes without even knowing that

they're working for Russia they just think they're earning a couple of bucks this sounds kind of ridiculous right to someone like me how how does someone go about agreeing to that will the Russian handlers start them off by paying them really small amounts like seven bucks to do some anti Ukrainian graffiti this is known as What's called the foot in the door technique it's a psychological effect this concept is based on the idea that if someone agrees to a small request first they're more likely to agree to a larger request later this technique works because

the initial small agreement creates a sense of commitment in a person making them more likely to comply with subsequent larger requests to maintain that consistency one day you're helping your friend Boris out the next day you're firebombing warehouses in Poland since many of the potential Russian agents were kicked out of Europe the FSB is now using these kind of local proxies and they communicate with them through Telegram and other secur networks that are often affiliated with gangs and criminal organizations who carry out their work on the ground quote there are some who become spies for

money or out of the vanity of megalomania or out of ambition or out of desire for Thrills but the malady of our time is those who become spies out of idealism arson attacks conducted at warehouses in Poland that hold Western military equipment destined for Ukraine has also been reported these sabotage efforts have been linked to arson on warehouses in England with Communications gear meant for Ukraine this might seem like a coincidence right I'm just putting all the pieces together myself and connecting the dots that don't really exist but it gets really fishy when you find

out another Warehouse owned by the same company was hit in Spain a paint factory in Poland several different private homes in Lafia even an arson attacked on IKEA store in Lithuania this is alleged to be the work of Kremlin agents but haven't we all wanted to burn down in Ikea before torching places is a preferred method because it doesn't require transporting weapons and can be made on location with less links back to Moscow fighting back has been a challenge for NATO and the EU because there's this lack of mutual trust between nations not not entirely

but at this level right because Counter Intelligence operations are typically considered a domestic Affair it'd be like giving your phone and password away to your neighbor and telling them hey don't go snooping around in there one of the methods used by the CIA and MI6 is a detection technique that includes making citizens aware of what the dangers are much of their intelligence comes from ordinary people noticing something's off these developments are nothing new if you've been closely monitoring the space even as early as October 2014 a Czech arms Depot that had weapons stored to be

sent to Ukraine was was destroyed by Russian intelligence agents they planted explosives at the site that killed two innocent workers there Belling cat revealed that this was the work of unit 29155 that I mentioned earlier now I'm not the kind of person to see KGB agents in my seral in the morning but it shouldn't really be surprising that we're seeing all this we're sending a lot of weapons to Ukraine and uh those weapons are being used against Russia so I'm kind of surprised that we're not seeing more of this but that's why we're seeing suspicious

things like these and recent explosions at the BAE Systems manufacturing Factory in Wales and it starts to look like Russian agents were involved there too I could go on and on about these fires arson attacks that also broke out in Berlin and even at an artillery production plant in Pennsylvania in the United States although that probably was just an accident because it's also true that producing explosives is dangerous work and it always has been if I had to guess Russia's concerned about escalating the conflict like how the West says that they're concerned about escalating if

Moscow was to be more overt and cause more damage then NATO could decide to retaliate by sending more military aid to Ukraine I think the main objective for these Russian agents is to sew fear among people in Europe to degrade support without doing anything that would show up in international headlines from moscow's perspective these actions are useful because there's now an added hidden cost applied to weapons transfers because NATO needs to tighten Security in the supply chain this slows down the speed of ammunition transfers to Ukraine as well what I'm observing is a lot of

little fires probably a bad analy but it's a dozen of little attacks and they're barely big enough to make the local news in whatever said country in Europe that you find this happening and it's in tiny Publications you'll see a small article about Russian operatives accused of plotting attacks on US military bases in Germany but there's always this facade of plausible deniability around them always with information on how Moscow denies it a Russian Embassy in Germany for instance made a Facebook post saying quote we reject attempts to find the involvement of Russian special services in

the development of alleged plans to attack military facilities located in Germany including American bases as absurd and ridiculous not sure what's less credible hearing it from Russia or hearing it in Facebook in general but their plans include conducting sabotage attacks on Military targets inside Germany including the Ramstein Airbase which serves as one of the central hubs of American military operations in Europe a family of Russian spies was recently living in Argentina who were recently released in a high-profile prisoner exchange the children weren't even aware that they were Russian until they got off the plane from

The Prisoner exchange and hugged Putin not knowing who he was I used to love that TV show The Americans and this seems weirdly like a scene exactly from that show that takes place in the Cold War era you can't come forward against the world's most powerful intelligence agencies and be completely free from risk spycraft has changed quite a bit since the end of the Cold War back in the 60s and 80s at its peak it was a bit more ideologically based you got your capitalism versus your communism now in 2024 their focus is almost entirely

on disrupting practical things like Ukraine's ability to defend itself and this is being done in ways not possible since 40 years ago with the Advent of cyber operations social media and Communications equipment that would make even CU blush on March 5th 2024 Germany reported that a highlevel Classified phone call was intercepted after it was mistakenly not made on a secure line so it's not just explosives going on here we've also got intelligence Communications at the digital level the call involved Lieutenant General ghatz of the German LIF wafa discussing delivery of Taurus cruise missiles to Ukraine

that had not been publicly or national government approved yet while hinting that the British military forces had been sent to key to train soldiers on how to operate rq7 Shadow drones the whole thing was a big Kur fuffle and a mess the entire 30-minute conversation was leaked by Russian State media the conversation sparked controversy within the German government not just about the actual call being compromised but about aiding Ukraine as a whole with many particularly the German Chancellor Olaf Schultz refusing to send Taurus ammunition While others within the government like the national green party strongly

supported the additional Aid when the political party founded on ecology and nonviolence tells you to send missiles you know things are going bad having spies conducting sexy operations like blowing up Bridges and sabotaging military bases and sleeping with clandestine hunky men and women all across the European landscape it's useful to a certain degree but these political undermining that are exactly how Russia is looking to exploit their Espionage capabilities Bridges can be repaired bases can be defended but sewing political instability is where they get a real return on their investment Ukraine by nearly all accounts is

entirely dependent on lethal foreign aid in order to continue to defend itself against the Russian invasion if the Kremlin is able to turn popular opinion against Ukraine or at the very least forced opposition politicians that dig their own trenches deeper than it's one less pallet of weapons and ammo the Russian military will be on the receiving end of don't worry it doesn't stop there it gets a lot weirder in February 2024 ve tomov an assistant to the Federal Branch of the alternative for German party was outed as working with Russia's intelligence Branch the FSB he

was tasked with helping to politically destabilize the German Parliament and prevent leopard main battle tanks from being delivered to Ukraine he failed in that attempt but it did reveal something right Germany has been particularly vulnerable to these kinds of Russian intrusions due to both their historical relationship with the Cold War and the Deep economic relationship over the last three decades because half of Germany as you might remember was under Soviet control after World War II there's a large ethnically Russian population still living there to this day of about 3.5 million people according to a 2018

census after the Cold War ended Germany adopted primarily an economic form of diplomacy with Russia which led to Russian Nationals heavily involved in the financial and by extension government positions there over the 600 suspected agents who we talked about before in the beginning of the video who were removed from Europe 40 alone were working in the Russian Embassy located in Berlin when Soros come they come not single spies but in battalions depending on how many Tom Clancy novels you read it might surprise you to hear that Austria is a major hotspot for disruptive Counter Intelligence

operations on March 29th 2024 a former Austrian intelligence officer of the BBT a was arrested under suspicion that they've been providing secret information from National Police databases on an almost daily basis to the kemin this kicked off a scandal in Austrian Parliament which is due for elections later this year and the result of this election could lead to an interesting change for how Austria regards foreign spies on their soil see while most of us think of Austria as being incredibly Westward leaning and generally opposed to Russian interference the same way that its neighbors are but

in reality it's it's it's a bit different while Austria ideologically at the very least is very much in tune with the rest of Europe being part of the EU they're very intentionally not part of NATO and they've kept a highlevel relations with Russia since the end of the Cold War Austria operates off a declaration of neutrality which is one of the major conditions of their constitution since 1955 in order for it to uh no longer have been occupied in the same way Germany was after 1945 not only can Austria not con institutionally join NATO they

can't join any military Alliance at all having any foreign military bases inside of their borders or participate in a war this resulted in some really interesting laws surrounding foreign Espionage inside their country according to sections 254 256 319 of the Austrian Espionage law it's illegal to leak their own State secrets and illegal to operate any kind of clandestine military or government intelligence Services inside their borders but and this is the most important part only if it is specifically detrimental to Austria itself in short it's free real estate this led to Vienna located smack dab in

the center of Europe and home to numerous EU and international government agencies to be an epicenter for foreign spy activity even if individuals are caught and prosecuted the current maximum prison sentence is only 5 years making operations there low risk and high reward a 5 years in a prison doesn't sound like a great time but it's relatively speaking a lot less than what you'll get elsewhere many Austrian officials are pushing for harsher sentences for foreign spies and increased Counter Intelligence funding in order to no longer have this reputation as the Spy capital of the world

as the number of convicted Russian spies continues to grow to this day the governments of NATO member states are working to increase their own Counter Intelligence agencies to thwart this new wave of Espionage now I've got to go call my CIA Handler and let him know that I finished this video If you guys enjoyed this video pleasee consider following me on Twitter at Cappy Army because a bunch of you on there gave me information that I used in this video so I appreciate that and uh check out one of these videos while you're here