3 hours ago 2

‘Peace’ with Russia already means a steady stream of hybrid attacks on US, Europe

With every day of the new White House administration that passes, the chances of Russia being brought in from the cold on the international stage after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine appear to be increasing.

U.S. President Donald Trump's ongoing Kremlin charm campaign has seen Ukraine and Europe sidelined in peace negotiations, reports that sanctions against Moscow could be lifted, and even accusations from top Democrats that the U.S. is actively siding with Russia.

Experts who spoke to the Kyiv Independent say the U.S.'s new stance ignores one crucial thing — Vladimir Putin's Russia does not, and never has wanted, truly peaceful relations with the West and has been engaged in a hybrid war with it for decades.

Putin’s hybrid assaults on the West have included assassinations abroad, the egregious jailing of foreigners in Russia, the funneling of weapons and facilitation of corruption, and, of course, an infamous army of hackers who carry out cyberattacks.

Conflict with the West is "the foundation of (Putin’s) rule now," John Foreman, CBE, a former UK defence attaché in both Kyiv and Moscow, told the Kyiv Independent.

"If you've got the foreign bogey — you know, Anglo-Saxons, the predatory West, fascist Ukrainians, puppet states and all that — that's the justification for why you have to be in power indefinitely, why Russian freedoms are being crushed and why there's no free media."

Foreman was stationed in Moscow in the immediate aftermath of the poisoning of Soviet defector Sergey Skripal in Salisbury, an event he says sealed U.K. hostility towards the Russian government after a long history of hybrid attacks on NATO members.

Regardless of Trump’s planned peace deal with Russia, that campaign, he said, "will endure, because the wider conflict with the West and with Ukraine is about dividing us to achieve political goals."

"So why would Putin stop that?”

Lauri Luht is currently Estonia’s cyber attaché in Kyiv. He recalled waking up during a 2007 cyber attack to find government websites, including that of the border service for which he worked at the time, shut down and an email inbox choked with junk.

Those attacks — which struck as Estonia removed a Soviet monument from Tallinn — were one of the first times Russian actors had weaponized cyberspace for geopolitical aims.

A distributed-denial-of-service attack like the 2007 hit on Estonia is almost quaint today. In subsequent years, Russia’s cyber arsenal has "grown so vicious,” Luht said.

"And the problem, of course, is that the best cyber attacks still remain invisible," Luht told the Kyiv Independent. Like Foreman, he sees no reason to think Russia will stop.

"Ukraine is the primary focus of Russia right now, but that doesn't mean that they don't have others in their focus," Luht said.

"The (cyber) attacks which are carried out against Ukraine today might be already happening or might happen tomorrow against others."

"I believe the Russians, energized by the internal belief that Trump will save them, will start testing Article 5 in a systematic manner to trigger a slippery slope undermining NATO."

Trump's warming relations with Russia threaten NATO’s fundamental protections, said Dr. Jan Kallberg, a research scientist and associate professor at West Point.

"I believe the Russians, energized by the internal belief that Trump will save them, will start testing Article 5 in a systematic manner to trigger a slippery slope undermining NATO," Kallberg told the Kyiv Independent.

Kallberg added this could take many forms but used the hypothetical example of false Kremlin claims of Norwegian border guards crossing the border into Russia.

In this example, Russian forces could open fire on actual Norwegian guards manning the border, prompting Norway to invoke Article 5. Kallberg said it's unlikely that NATO would declare war on Russia over such an incident, so faith in NATO as a reliable defensive mechanism would be thrown into question.

"Five to ten of these provocations and Article 5 is undermined. Then Russia has succeeded," he said.

Trump’s current courting of Putin for a peace deal neglects that Russian agents have obliquely attacked the U.S. and NATO with relative impunity for almost 20 years.

Russia has shown little respect for NATO and its Article 5, nor for the borders, security, or interests of any country that is not Russia.

Below is an incomplete timeline of Putin-era hybrid attacks on NATO nations. The total number of such attacks will never be known — Western computer systems silently fall victim to Russian cyber gangs every day.

2006: Assassination of Alexander Litvinenko

A Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) agent who investigated organized crime, Litvinenko fled Russia for the U.K. after growing critical of Putin. He was later poisoned by FSB agents in London with polonium-210, leading to a slow and painful death and Putin’s first major hybrid incursion into the West.

2007: Estonia cyber attack

Three years after joining NATO, Estonia relocated a Soviet statue from the center of Tallinn. A massive distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack roiled the country’s digital infrastructure for almost a month, an attack that was subsequently connected to pro-Kremlin but formally independent cyber gangs.

2013: Simulated attack on Stockholm

The Russian Air Force ran training missions over the Baltic Sea, 35 kilometers from the Swedish border, including a simulated attack on military targets in and around Stockholm.

2014: Illegal annexation of Crimea, unofficial invasion of Luhansk and Donetsk.

Russian soldiers, wearing no identifying insignia, patrol outside the Simferopol International Airport after a pro-Russian crowd had gathered near Simferopol, Crimea, Ukraine on Feb. 28, 2014

People walk outside the building of the Crimean parliament, bearing a Russian flag in occupied Simferopol, Ukraine on March 20, 2014.

2015: Poisoning of Bulgarian arms dealer supplying Ukraine

Agents from the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (GRU) poisoned Emilian Gebrev, a Bulgarian arms manufacturer selling weapons to Ukraine in Sofia — the first of many attempts on Gebrev’s life.

2015: Russia begins running air raids on behalf of Syrian dictator, Bashar al-Assad.

Smoke rises after Russian airstrikes hit Daret Ezza in Aleppo, Syria, on Oct. 13, 2015. Smoke rises after Russian airstrikes hit Daret Ezza in Aleppo, Syria, on Oct. 13, 2015.

Several hundred people, holding up portraits of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin (L), gather near the Russian embassy in Damascus, Syria on Oct.13, 2015

2016-2020: Arms to Taliban; bounty on U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan

Reports from U.S. intelligence in 2020 revealed evidence of a Russian campaign to pay the Taliban for killing U.S. soldiers.

While the CIA at the time said it had “low to moderate confidence” in that intel, 2025 investigations from Germany’s Der Spiegel and Russian dissident outlet the Insider identified individuals involved in a scheme to pay $200,000 per dead soldier.

2015-2017: Maria Butina’s infiltration of conservative groups in U.S.

Russian agent Maria Butina used affairs with well-connected conservatives like political operative Paul Erickson and Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne to infiltrate Republican groups like the National Rifle Association.

After pleading guilty to acting as an unregistered agent, she served a year and a half in jail. Today, Butina is a member of Russia’s parliament.

2016: Russian hack on U.S. Democratic National Committee

As part of a broader cyber campaign against the West, Russian government actors hacked the Democratic National Convention’s servers as well as then-Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s campaign staff, releasing tens of thousands of emails through WikiLeaks.

The hack followed a public statement from then-candidate Donald Trump calling on anyone who could to get a hold of Clinton’s emails, which would lead Trump to spend subsequent years denying collusion with Moscow.

2016-2017: Alleged coup, definite threats in Montenegro

Montenegro’s NATO accession was rife with Russian threats of "active measures" to stop the longtime Balkan ally from joining the block.

In 2016, Montenegrin authorities accused 13 Montenegrins, Serbians, and Russians of planning an armed coup, though those charges were dropped in 2024.

2018: Battle of Khasham, Syria against U.S. soldiers

During the Battle of Khasham, around 500 pro-Assad forces, including Wagner mercenaries, attacked 40 U.S. Special Forces who had turned a derelict oil refinery into an outpost while fighting ISIS.

U.S. airstrikes killed 200-300 members of the Syrian coalition, while taking no casualties.

A Russian military police officer stands guard near portraits of Bashar al-Assad and Vladimir Putin at the Wafideen checkpoint near Damascus, Syria, on March 1, 2018.

2018: Poisoning of Sergei Skripal in U.K.

Russian agents traveled to Salisbury, in the rural south of England, to poison former KGB agent and U.K. defector Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, using a Soviet-designed nerve agent, Novichok.

While denying Russia’s role — ultimately confirmed based on OSINT investigations — Putin described Skripal as a "traitor to the motherland and a scumbag."

Military personnel in protective suits cover two ambulances with tarpaulin before removing them from Salisbury ambulance station in Salisbury, England, on March 10, 2018.

2019-2021: SolarWinds hack on U.S. gov’t

In possibly the biggest cyber attack ever to hit the American government, hackers directed by the GRU slipped malicious code into a software update that compromised an estimated 18,000 devices and government agencies, including the defense, justice, treasury, and energy departments.

2021: Colonial Pipeline hack on U.S. energy

DarkSide, a ransomware gang believed to be based in Russia, hit the networks behind an oil pipeline that paralyzed energy supplies along the U.S. East Coast.

2020-2024: Arming Iranian proxy groups and militias

An arms channel between Russia and Iran has for years provided Russian weapons to Iran-backed militant groups ranging from Hezbollah in Lebanon to the Houthis in Yemen, which have at various points targeted U.S bases and embassies as well as Western shipping in the Gulf of Aden.

Rockets like Russia’s Grad have been particular favorites. Iran, in turn, provides Russia with weapons that it uses to attack Ukraine.

Russia's President Vladimir Putin and Iran's President Ebrahim Raisi walk together following their meeting in the Kremlin in Moscow Dec. 7, 2023.

2022: Attacks on al-Tanf in Syria

The Russian Defense Ministry struck U.S.-backed Syrian groups at a U.S. garrison in al-Tanf with air strikes multiple times over the course of 2022.

2024: Attempted assassination of German arms executive

The Russian government reportedly planned to assassinate Armin Paperger, CEO of Rheinmetall, one of the largest weapons makers in Europe, over the firm’s supply of weapons to Ukraine.

German and U.S. intelligence ultimately foiled the plans.