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Not asserting this is definitely a Russian op (given the amount of simultaneous farmers' protests and all in NL today), but their modus operandi for foreign ope

by apt-get 11d ago

Not asserting this is definitely a Russian op (given the amount of simultaneous farmers' protests and all in NL today), but their modus operandi for foreign operations of this kind involves paying random thugs a few hundred to a couple thousand euros to carry out acts of sabotage using whatever items they have on hand. The items don't need to match, the people involved don't need to know each other.

sandos 11d ago
Exactly this, and also they are trying to keep some deniability here, so variations are good.
- hgomersall 11d ago
  Why would you want to keep it deniable? What's the point in this sort of sabotage if nobody knows you did it?
  - grim_io 11d ago
    Russia is trying to avoid retaliation through stricter sanctions, for example.
  - ChrisMarshallNY 11d ago
    They seem to be very good at "mob tactics." No one can prove anything, for example, but anyone knows that people that piss Putin off, need to stay away from windows in high places.
    - nico_h 11d ago
      The windows are entirely blameless. If a window gets near you, it’s already too late, you’re now just a message “pour encourager les autres”.
    - vlovich123 11d ago
      That’s because the distinction between the Russian mob and the government is nonexistent
  - the_mitsuhiko 11d ago
    Doubt is always good.
  - DrScientist 11d ago
    The ideal scenario is everyone suspects it's you but can't prove it. You have both the desired threat, but no concrete biases for an official response. Also an uncertainty limits action - it might be a random event, it could even be a false flag. One of the problem's here is narratives are being spun by multiple actors and it depends on who you believe.
    - spwa4 11d ago
      > The ideal scenario is everyone suspects it's you but can't prove it. Why? EU countries have shown time and time again they won't do anything. I mean for God's sake, Russia was caught sending THREE remote controlled flying bomb on a German airfield, with another one found by a passerby before it was launched. They contained professionally made Russian explosives. There is no doubt who did it. This was not the first, or the 10th time they got caught. I mean Russia murdered someone in the UK with polonium, for God's sake. The idea that the Kremlin is worried in the slightest that you can prove it's them is absurd. They leave their fingerprints knowing there will be no reaction.
      - brookst 11d ago
        Because being too blatant will galvanize the public and create support for open war. The goal is to ensure all reasonable people know, while keeping enough deniability that Russian-funded right-wing groups can sow doubt about attribution and response policy’s They don’t care whether it can be proven in court or by people paying close attention. They care whether it can’t be denied even by their aligned agents in western countries.
        TFYS 11d ago
        Maybe it depends on the country, but here the public automatically assumes everything like this done by Russia and these increase support for open war. I don't think Russia wants deeper European involvement in the war, so I'm having trouble understanding why Russia would be doing this. They're already having difficulties in Ukraine, how would angering the European public and increasing the support for further involvement help Russia achieve its goals?
  - hnlmorg 11d ago
    Because otherwise it would be an act of war. At which point they might as well have just fired a rocket into the country.
    - red-iron-pine 11d ago
      finish the thought: this means you need to retaliate. You either step up and hit back, or look weak and invite further problems. random vandals -- that's just local scumbags being scumbags. These things happens, no need to start WWIII
      - yakshaving_jgt 10d ago
        > You either step up and hit back, or look weak and invite further problems. The latter is exactly what the western world did in 2014, and its why we have this much larger war now.
        LtWorf 10d ago
        So we should attack russia, cause WW3 because you are paranoid that they might do that first?
        yakshaving_jgt 10d ago
        We should forcibly remove russian occupying forces from Ukraine. That would be enforcing international law, not pushing for war.
        LtWorf 10d ago
        Are we also going to invade USA to make them stop attacking iran, venezuela and so on?
        yakshaving_jgt 10d ago
        That would probably need to come from domestic public pressure. Different countries work differently. What would work for russia would not necessarily work for the USA.
  - vintermann 11d ago
    If the main point is slowing/frustrating drone production? It would honestly be kind of fair game to sabotage production of drones that would be used against you, even if they're made in a country you're not at war with --- if it wasn't for Russia having a lot of responsibility for that war in the first place (to put it mildly).
    - vincnetas 11d ago
      what do you mean "fair game"? by the same logic russia attacking ukraine is also "fair game". "hei cmon im just atacking my neighbor its fair game, what else should i do"
      - deleted 11d ago
        [deleted]
      - vintermann 11d ago
        I mean what I said: if you're being attacked by drones, then no one can fault you for trying to sabotage the production of those drones, even if they're made in a different country than the one which is sending them against you. But, you can and should fault Russia for getting into that position in the first place, that their neighbor is attacking them back with drones.
        vincnetas 11d ago
        but why are you attacked by drones thats the million dollar question...
        vintermann 11d ago
        Which I answered?
        Sabinus 11d ago
        I guess no one can fault the West for retaliating by paying people to light stuff on fire in Russia, for deterrence. And I guess no one can blame the West for sending Ukraine more missiles to fire into Russia, to end the war.
  - vlovich123 11d ago
    This isn’t a show of power. Sabotage works best when your target doesn’t even realize it was sabotage. Similarly it’s best if you misattribute blame because then you’re fighting the wrong party and looking for ghosts. Russia throwing journalists out of windows or paining with Novachok - that’s a “it’s us, you can’t do anything about it, don’t fuck with us” power signal that benefits from “plausible” deniability - you can’t prove it was us.
  - bulbar 11d ago
    It's not about demonstrating, it's about results and this is only training.
tyrabound 11d ago
It's odd that you would jump to "Russian op" and hedging by _not_ asserting that it is "definitely" one; but it very well could also be and arguably even is far more likely an act by someone who would benefit form scaring the public and manipulating the affected governments. I'm not going to assert at all, one way or another who it may be because it could be several actors with interests in producing outcomes of fear among the public and animating and manipulating the respective governments and the clowns in the EU to take actions without thinking. It is really a rather common playbook of stoking fear and even instigating war not for direct outcomes that has been used innumerable times over history. Only it seems that the majority of people are incapable of seeing, accepting, or maybe just internalizing when they are being played, lied to, and manipulated for the benefit of others at their own expense. One thing that logic would dictate though is that Russia would be extremely low on the list of suspects since they gain nothing by some minor event like this, are negatively affected in every manner possible by being in any way behind such actions, and they could simply just send barrages of missiles to hit actually meaningful targets if they ever become sick and tired of all the CIA/MI6 clowns thinking they can salami slice their way into conquering Russia and once the Germans and Poles have been whipped up to be the battering ram of minced meat again. It's why we have so many catastrophic and calamitous events in our history because people never ask themselves who may be benefitting from the act that is immediately used to manipulate people through fear. In spite of having been told and explained a long time ago and many times since, you should always ask you who benefits, cui bono. Russia does not benefit from scaring the populace into supporting the murderous and war mongering governments and the maniacal ruling parasites that control them in order to profit from war as they send your children in to the meat grinder.
- apt-get 11d ago
  > One thing that logic would dictate though is that Russia would be extremely low on the list of suspects since they gain nothing and are negatively affected in every manner possible by being in any way behind such actions. Or one could choose not to take this in isolation from all the acts of brazen and identified sabotage Russia does, slashing deep-sea cables in international waters with their shadow fleets, organizing psyop campaigns throughout the entire continent that can be traced back right to their government units, and so on :-)
kakacik 11d ago
There was recently this german lady reporter who posed as actively pro-Putin for few months and it didn't take long for fsb/gru to come to her online. It started small, just check this or that, little favor there but soon escalated to proper spycraft. Some other folks reported having death threats against family. Its for peanuts, few hundred euros mostly. They just need to find the dumbest and most desperate folks to commit acts of treason.
- somenameforme 11d ago
  The chances of this being real are basically zero, or Russia would be getting double agented, and reverse intelling themselves, out the arse. Instead all we get are attempts to connect random events, of which there are endless viable suspects, to Russia. It's fair to say that if one jumps in the middle of a fight, they should expect to get punched, but it's also fair to say that for now Russia has been avoiding throwing much in the way of punches.
  - wbeckler 11d ago
    Here's the article in Germany about the incident: https://www.rtl.de/news/russische-spionage-rtl-reporter-undercover-als-wegwerfagenten-was-plant-der-russische-geheimdienst-id31210191.html https://www.rtl.de/news/russische-spionage-rtl-reporter-unde...
    - somenameforme 11d ago
      I'm not saying such claims are not being published, I'm saying they're likely false because they make about as much sense as a country blowing up its own pipeline. Espionage outside of war is an extremely sensitive issue, and were any country trivially baitable, they'd end up getting played hard. Not only would it eliminate deniability, but you also open up the door to major counter-intel operations and getting more insight into the operations, potentially on a massive scale, of an adversary. I suspect this is why there's endless stories, in pretty much every country, of dissidents handing over information to 'enemy states' who are in fact just domestic law enforcement. These people glow to everybody, and no foreign power's going to touch them.
edouard-harris 11d ago
Correct, this is their exact MO and has been for decades. "Random thug" recruitment notwithstanding, part of the point of such ops is to prove to themselves that they can, in fact, reach out and touch a target - i.e., exercising the entire operational chain from C&C down to the minutiae of execution. A kind of integration test for sabotage, if you will. (Not saying this specific incident is or isn't anything in particular, just commenting on the general MO.) If one were in a charitable mood, one could think of this as a "just in case" measure of ongoing capability assurance in the event of a broader conflict. In a less charitable mood, one might imagine it as preparation for proactive action. In either case, if you don't do this kind of sub-threshold stuff at least occasionally, you often discover that when a real conflict erupts, the capabilities you thought you had are in fact literally or figuratively rusty. (See the Russian army's logistical debacle early in the Ukraine war for a recent example.) Most top tier nation states do some version of this; each one has its own style. The Russians are somewhat unusual in that they care less than most who knows or suspects them of this kind of activity.
- card_zero 11d ago
  France does some version or style of derailing Russian trains, you say?
  - ggdG 11d ago
    Not exactly "random thugs", but this comes to mind: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinking_of_the_Rainbow_Warrior https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinking_of_the_Rainbow_Warrior >The sinking of Rainbow Warrior, codenamed Opération Satanique, was an act of French state-terrorism carried out on 10 July 1985. The event was described by France as a "covert operation" by the "action" branch of the French foreign intelligence agency, the Directorate-General for External Security (DGSE). During the operation, two operatives (both French citizens) sank the flagship of the Greenpeace fleet, Rainbow Warrior, at the Port of Auckland on her way to a protest against a planned French nuclear test in Moruroa. Fernando Pereira, a photographer, drowned on the sinking ship.
  - phainopepla2 11d ago
    France provides Ukraine with targeting information that allows Ukraine to strike deep inside Russia, including industrial targets. So France is directly contributing to attacks against non-military target in Russia, yes. Source: https://www.kyivpost.com/post/81382 https://www.kyivpost.com/post/81382
nahgF 11d ago
To achieve what exactly? All the Russians would get from this is BBC warmongering articles and increased resolve of EU politicians. The latter is desired by Ukraine and by the US, which wants more proxies against Russia. The only known operation was the Nord Stream sabotage done by Ukraine. I have enough of this. If the US is so desperate to weaken Russia, please attack through the Bering Strait and leave the EU alone.
- red-iron-pine 11d ago
  the US government is owned lock and stock by the Russians. They do not want more proxies, and under Trump, are actively trying to fracture NATO.
  - PorciiVorbesc 11d ago
    >the US government is owned lock and stock by the Russians So that's what we're calling "AIPAC(Israel)" now? "The Russians"?
pndc 10d ago
It occurred on Prinsjesdag, which is a particularly popular time of year for the Dutch to protest. If it was Russia trying to make a point, it was a wasted effort as they did it on a day where it is lost in the noise. It's like if Russia decided to set off a few fires and explosions in the USA on July 4th. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

by apt-get 11d ago

sandos 11d ago

Exactly this, and also they are trying to keep some deniability here, so variations are good.

hgomersall 11d ago
Why would you want to keep it deniable? What's the point in this sort of sabotage if nobody knows you did it?
- grim_io 11d ago
  Russia is trying to avoid retaliation through stricter sanctions, for example.
- ChrisMarshallNY 11d ago
  They seem to be very good at "mob tactics." No one can prove anything, for example, but anyone knows that people that piss Putin off, need to stay away from windows in high places.
  - nico_h 11d ago
    The windows are entirely blameless. If a window gets near you, it’s already too late, you’re now just a message “pour encourager les autres”.
  - vlovich123 11d ago
    That’s because the distinction between the Russian mob and the government is nonexistent
- the_mitsuhiko 11d ago
  Doubt is always good.
- DrScientist 11d ago
  The ideal scenario is everyone suspects it's you but can't prove it. You have both the desired threat, but no concrete biases for an official response. Also an uncertainty limits action - it might be a random event, it could even be a false flag. One of the problem's here is narratives are being spun by multiple actors and it depends on who you believe.
  - spwa4 11d ago
    > The ideal scenario is everyone suspects it's you but can't prove it. Why? EU countries have shown time and time again they won't do anything. I mean for God's sake, Russia was caught sending THREE remote controlled flying bomb on a German airfield, with another one found by a passerby before it was launched. They contained professionally made Russian explosives. There is no doubt who did it. This was not the first, or the 10th time they got caught. I mean Russia murdered someone in the UK with polonium, for God's sake. The idea that the Kremlin is worried in the slightest that you can prove it's them is absurd. They leave their fingerprints knowing there will be no reaction.
    - brookst 11d ago
      Because being too blatant will galvanize the public and create support for open war. The goal is to ensure all reasonable people know, while keeping enough deniability that Russian-funded right-wing groups can sow doubt about attribution and response policy’s They don’t care whether it can be proven in court or by people paying close attention. They care whether it can’t be denied even by their aligned agents in western countries.
      - TFYS 11d ago
        Maybe it depends on the country, but here the public automatically assumes everything like this done by Russia and these increase support for open war. I don't think Russia wants deeper European involvement in the war, so I'm having trouble understanding why Russia would be doing this. They're already having difficulties in Ukraine, how would angering the European public and increasing the support for further involvement help Russia achieve its goals?
- hnlmorg 11d ago
  Because otherwise it would be an act of war. At which point they might as well have just fired a rocket into the country.
  - red-iron-pine 11d ago
    finish the thought: this means you need to retaliate. You either step up and hit back, or look weak and invite further problems. random vandals -- that's just local scumbags being scumbags. These things happens, no need to start WWIII
    - yakshaving_jgt 10d ago
      > You either step up and hit back, or look weak and invite further problems. The latter is exactly what the western world did in 2014, and its why we have this much larger war now.
      - LtWorf 10d ago
        So we should attack russia, cause WW3 because you are paranoid that they might do that first?
        yakshaving_jgt 10d ago
        We should forcibly remove russian occupying forces from Ukraine. That would be enforcing international law, not pushing for war.
        LtWorf 10d ago
        Are we also going to invade USA to make them stop attacking iran, venezuela and so on?
        yakshaving_jgt 10d ago
        That would probably need to come from domestic public pressure. Different countries work differently. What would work for russia would not necessarily work for the USA.
- vintermann 11d ago
  If the main point is slowing/frustrating drone production? It would honestly be kind of fair game to sabotage production of drones that would be used against you, even if they're made in a country you're not at war with --- if it wasn't for Russia having a lot of responsibility for that war in the first place (to put it mildly).
  - vincnetas 11d ago
    what do you mean "fair game"? by the same logic russia attacking ukraine is also "fair game". "hei cmon im just atacking my neighbor its fair game, what else should i do"
    - deleted 11d ago
      [deleted]
    - vintermann 11d ago
      I mean what I said: if you're being attacked by drones, then no one can fault you for trying to sabotage the production of those drones, even if they're made in a different country than the one which is sending them against you. But, you can and should fault Russia for getting into that position in the first place, that their neighbor is attacking them back with drones.
      - vincnetas 11d ago
        but why are you attacked by drones thats the million dollar question...
        vintermann 11d ago
        Which I answered?
      - Sabinus 11d ago
        I guess no one can fault the West for retaliating by paying people to light stuff on fire in Russia, for deterrence. And I guess no one can blame the West for sending Ukraine more missiles to fire into Russia, to end the war.
- vlovich123 11d ago
  This isn’t a show of power. Sabotage works best when your target doesn’t even realize it was sabotage. Similarly it’s best if you misattribute blame because then you’re fighting the wrong party and looking for ghosts. Russia throwing journalists out of windows or paining with Novachok - that’s a “it’s us, you can’t do anything about it, don’t fuck with us” power signal that benefits from “plausible” deniability - you can’t prove it was us.
- bulbar 11d ago
  It's not about demonstrating, it's about results and this is only training.

tyrabound 11d ago

It's odd that you would jump to "Russian op" and hedging by _not_ asserting that it is "definitely" one; but it very well could also be and arguably even is far more likely an act by someone who would benefit form scaring the public and manipulating the affected governments. I'm not going to assert at all, one way or another who it may be because it could be several actors with interests in producing outcomes of fear among the public and animating and manipulating the respective governments and the clowns in the EU to take actions without thinking. It is really a rather common playbook of stoking fear and even instigating war not for direct outcomes that has been used innumerable times over history. Only it seems that the majority of people are incapable of seeing, accepting, or maybe just internalizing when they are being played, lied to, and manipulated for the benefit of others at their own expense. One thing that logic would dictate though is that Russia would be extremely low on the list of suspects since they gain nothing by some minor event like this, are negatively affected in every manner possible by being in any way behind such actions, and they could simply just send barrages of missiles to hit actually meaningful targets if they ever become sick and tired of all the CIA/MI6 clowns thinking they can salami slice their way into conquering Russia and once the Germans and Poles have been whipped up to be the battering ram of minced meat again. It's why we have so many catastrophic and calamitous events in our history because people never ask themselves who may be benefitting from the act that is immediately used to manipulate people through fear. In spite of having been told and explained a long time ago and many times since, you should always ask you who benefits, cui bono. Russia does not benefit from scaring the populace into supporting the murderous and war mongering governments and the maniacal ruling parasites that control them in order to profit from war as they send your children in to the meat grinder.

apt-get 11d ago
> One thing that logic would dictate though is that Russia would be extremely low on the list of suspects since they gain nothing and are negatively affected in every manner possible by being in any way behind such actions. Or one could choose not to take this in isolation from all the acts of brazen and identified sabotage Russia does, slashing deep-sea cables in international waters with their shadow fleets, organizing psyop campaigns throughout the entire continent that can be traced back right to their government units, and so on :-)

kakacik 11d ago

There was recently this german lady reporter who posed as actively pro-Putin for few months and it didn't take long for fsb/gru to come to her online. It started small, just check this or that, little favor there but soon escalated to proper spycraft. Some other folks reported having death threats against family. Its for peanuts, few hundred euros mostly. They just need to find the dumbest and most desperate folks to commit acts of treason.

somenameforme 11d ago
The chances of this being real are basically zero, or Russia would be getting double agented, and reverse intelling themselves, out the arse. Instead all we get are attempts to connect random events, of which there are endless viable suspects, to Russia. It's fair to say that if one jumps in the middle of a fight, they should expect to get punched, but it's also fair to say that for now Russia has been avoiding throwing much in the way of punches.
- wbeckler 11d ago
  Here's the article in Germany about the incident: https://www.rtl.de/news/russische-spionage-rtl-reporter-undercover-als-wegwerfagenten-was-plant-der-russische-geheimdienst-id31210191.html https://www.rtl.de/news/russische-spionage-rtl-reporter-unde...
  - somenameforme 11d ago
    I'm not saying such claims are not being published, I'm saying they're likely false because they make about as much sense as a country blowing up its own pipeline. Espionage outside of war is an extremely sensitive issue, and were any country trivially baitable, they'd end up getting played hard. Not only would it eliminate deniability, but you also open up the door to major counter-intel operations and getting more insight into the operations, potentially on a massive scale, of an adversary. I suspect this is why there's endless stories, in pretty much every country, of dissidents handing over information to 'enemy states' who are in fact just domestic law enforcement. These people glow to everybody, and no foreign power's going to touch them.

edouard-harris 11d ago

Correct, this is their exact MO and has been for decades. "Random thug" recruitment notwithstanding, part of the point of such ops is to prove to themselves that they can, in fact, reach out and touch a target - i.e., exercising the entire operational chain from C&C down to the minutiae of execution. A kind of integration test for sabotage, if you will. (Not saying this specific incident is or isn't anything in particular, just commenting on the general MO.) If one were in a charitable mood, one could think of this as a "just in case" measure of ongoing capability assurance in the event of a broader conflict. In a less charitable mood, one might imagine it as preparation for proactive action. In either case, if you don't do this kind of sub-threshold stuff at least occasionally, you often discover that when a real conflict erupts, the capabilities you thought you had are in fact literally or figuratively rusty. (See the Russian army's logistical debacle early in the Ukraine war for a recent example.) Most top tier nation states do some version of this; each one has its own style. The Russians are somewhat unusual in that they care less than most who knows or suspects them of this kind of activity.

card_zero 11d ago
France does some version or style of derailing Russian trains, you say?
- ggdG 11d ago
  Not exactly "random thugs", but this comes to mind: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinking_of_the_Rainbow_Warrior https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinking_of_the_Rainbow_Warrior >The sinking of Rainbow Warrior, codenamed Opération Satanique, was an act of French state-terrorism carried out on 10 July 1985. The event was described by France as a "covert operation" by the "action" branch of the French foreign intelligence agency, the Directorate-General for External Security (DGSE). During the operation, two operatives (both French citizens) sank the flagship of the Greenpeace fleet, Rainbow Warrior, at the Port of Auckland on her way to a protest against a planned French nuclear test in Moruroa. Fernando Pereira, a photographer, drowned on the sinking ship.
- phainopepla2 11d ago
  France provides Ukraine with targeting information that allows Ukraine to strike deep inside Russia, including industrial targets. So France is directly contributing to attacks against non-military target in Russia, yes. Source: https://www.kyivpost.com/post/81382 https://www.kyivpost.com/post/81382

nahgF 11d ago

To achieve what exactly? All the Russians would get from this is BBC warmongering articles and increased resolve of EU politicians. The latter is desired by Ukraine and by the US, which wants more proxies against Russia. The only known operation was the Nord Stream sabotage done by Ukraine. I have enough of this. If the US is so desperate to weaken Russia, please attack through the Bering Strait and leave the EU alone.

red-iron-pine 11d ago
the US government is owned lock and stock by the Russians. They do not want more proxies, and under Trump, are actively trying to fracture NATO.
- PorciiVorbesc 11d ago
  >the US government is owned lock and stock by the Russians So that's what we're calling "AIPAC(Israel)" now? "The Russians"?

pndc 10d ago

It occurred on Prinsjesdag, which is a particularly popular time of year for the Dutch to protest. If it was Russia trying to make a point, it was a wasted effort as they did it on a day where it is lost in the noise. It's like if Russia decided to set off a few fires and explosions in the USA on July 4th. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.