Why Russia's Sabotage Campaign Has Not Worked

The sentence Ukrainian commanders keep repeating

Francis Farrell has heard it on every trip, from commanders and from people he respects intellectually: Russia only respects strength.

He states the mechanism rather than the slogan. Actions that projected strength, particularly joint actions between Ukraine and its partners, have consistently been met with threats and grumbling but no proportionate Russian response. Actions that signalled hesitation have been followed by Russia pushing further.

That pattern is the argument. It is not a claim about Russian psychology, it is an observation about what has followed from which choices over four and a half years.

There is a second, more hopeful reading of the current escalation that Farrell offers. Russia extending its campaign into Europe could finally entrench the idea that Ukraine's war and Europe's security are not separable, and that they have to be treated as one thing. Provided, he adds carefully, the response is appropriate.

By its own measure, Russia's campaign has failed

Rob Lee's contribution is to check the results rather than the intent, and the result is unambiguous.

Whatever Russia's sabotage campaign in Europe was meant to achieve, it has not achieved it. NATO countries are still supporting Ukraine. There has been no fracture among European states. There has been no visible moment of a government concluding that Russia raised the stakes too high and that it is time to pull back.

If splitting the coalition was the objective, it has not worked.

Lee checks the narrower objective too. Russia appears to have targeted some defence manufacturers through sabotage. Has that meaningfully reduced European production? It does not seem so, at least so far.

Which leaves a campaign that is real, ongoing, and not delivering.

What Russia is actually learning

The part worth attention is not damage but method. Russia is testing new forms of covert action.

One that Lee names specifically: recruiting people over Telegram with financial incentives, including Ukrainians living in Europe. That is a cheap, deniable, scalable model of operation that does not require professional officers on the ground.

The underappreciated consequence is that every attempt also teaches the defenders. Each operation gives European countries a worked example of what Russia will try and how it can be countered. Russia is running experiments in public, and both sides are taking notes.

The escalation risk is real, and it is four and a half years old

Lee's most useful contribution here is historical perspective, because the discussion is usually conducted as though every risk is new.

The escalation risk did not appear with the drones over Germany. It has existed since the start. NATO aid kills Russian soldiers. NATO intelligence is used to kill Russian soldiers. NATO intelligence supports strikes into Russia itself.

Then he supplies the comparison that should end most of these arguments. In 2022, the suggestion that US intelligence would support strikes on refineries inside Russia would have been considered wildly escalatory. It happens now.

The Crimea example is sharper still. In 2022 and 2023 Elon Musk argued publicly that striking Crimea, because of how Russia treats that territory, could lead to escalation. Starlink is now used to strike targets in Crimea routinely. It has not produced World War Three. It has posed real challenges for Russia. The predicted catastrophe did not arrive, and the tolerance for risk turned out to be higher than the loudest voices assumed.

That is not an argument that no line exists. It is an argument that the lines have repeatedly been drawn in the wrong place, always too conservatively, and always by people confident at the time.

Talking is fine, wobbling is not

Lee's policy position is unusually specific, and it separates two things that often get conflated.

Dialogue is fine. He sees no problem with CIA Director Ratcliffe going to Moscow to talk to officials, and notes the reporting on what was said varied wildly. He sees no problem with European governments talking either, if only to reduce the chance that a misperception produces an escalation nobody chose.

What has to accompany the dialogue is clarity. Russia should be left in no doubt that support for Ukraine continues, that what Russia is doing is unacceptable, and that this way of fighting a war is not something to be accommodated.

The operative word in his formulation is stability. Support should be strong and it should be predictable. He acknowledges the mistakes: things that could have been delivered sooner, decisions taken late. Most NATO members are still supporting Ukraine substantially, and the understanding that this matters for their own security is still intact.

Where he is frustrated

Lee ends on something closer to a complaint, and it is directed at NATO rather than at Russia.

He would like to see NATO members extracting far more lessons from this war than they are. He is frustrated that it is not happening faster. Some NATO militaries, in his assessment, still do not recognise how much the character of fighting has changed, nor that the way Russia would fight NATO has changed with it.

That is a pointed criticism from someone with unusual access to both the front and Western defence establishments. The war is generating the most detailed body of modern combat experience available anywhere, and the institutions with the most to gain from it are absorbing it slowly.

What to watch

• Whether any European government actually breaks ranks. So far none has, which is the strongest evidence that the sabotage campaign is not working.
• Whether covert recruitment via Telegram scales. It is cheap and deniable, which usually means it grows.
• Whether NATO militaries change doctrine, not just budgets. Lee's frustration is about learning, and spending is not the same as learning.