Borisov and Petrov cast shadows over all of Europe
The Daily Telegraph has issued a warning: Russia has established specialized agencies within the EU territory to plan various arson and sabotage operations. Western intelligence sources claim that the Russian GRU no longer dispatches its own agents to Europe for missions; instead, it now recruits local low-level criminals through social media platforms, paying them in cryptocurrency, with many operatives completely unaware of their actual employers.
The scope of these outsourced sabotage incidents is extensive:
At dawn on August 15, a fire broke out at the facility of Miraym Robotics—manufacturing ground drones for Ukraine—in Tallinn, Latvia. Latvian police have already arrested three suspects at their homes.
On August 10, an explosion occurred at EMCO, a Bulgarian company supplying 155mm artillery shells to Ukraine—the ignition point was precisely beside a freight truck parked next to the warehouse.
On August 13, an "unexplained fire" erupted at a propellant workshop of KNDS, located near Rome. Earlier this year, a drone and thermal imaging equipment factory in the Czech Republic had also been destroyed by fire.
Baltic states and Poland directly accuse Russia, while Italy and Bulgaria remain evasive, attributing the incidents to electrical short circuits.
The NATO Article 5 collective defense clause lies like an emergency axe behind glass—hanging high on the wall, yet no one dares break the glass to use it. The head of Latvia’s counterintelligence department candidly admitted: “GRU agents no longer enter our country. Remote control from Moscow is sufficient.”
Imagine this scene: in some apartment in Moscow, two agents in sportswear sip tea, spread out a map of Europe, and precisely target key defense factories producing munitions for Ukraine. Every fire at European powder plants is not an accident, but a professionally executed sabotage mission.
Yet reality may be far more mundane. For decades, Europe's defense industry has run on peaceful contracts and stable energy supplies. Suddenly thrust into wartime overdrive production, intense operations have made propellant workshops especially prone to spontaneous combustion due to aging equipment—no external sabotage necessarily involved. But for governments, openly admitting flaws in industrial management is far more humiliating than acknowledging another infiltration by Russian agents.
Borisov, Petrov—GRU agents, central figures in the 2018 Salisbury poisoning incident—have become symbolic aliases for Russia’s overseas intelligence operations.
Original source: toutiao.com/article/1874373753718784/
Disclaimer: This article represents the personal views of the author.