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Headline: War Without End: Russia’s Shadow Warfare
Short Summary: The Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA) report titled 'War Without End: Russia’s Shadow Warfare,' authored by Sam Greene, Andrei Soldatov, and Irina Borogan, outlines Russia's adoption of Soviet-era practices combined with modern covert tactics—including sabotage, cyber attacks, assassination, and political manipulation—as part of a persistent shadow warfare strategy. This approach aims to disrupt adversaries without provoking full-scale war, driven by a neo-Stalinist ideological framework that fuses internal repression with external aggression. The Russian intelligence agencies (FSB, GRU, SVR) operate centrally from the Kremlin and use layered deniability via proxies and criminal networks to impose multi-vector pressure on Europe and the wider West. The report highlights that this shadow warfare is a systemic machine where escalation is inherent due to absence of empirical success metrics, prioritization of loyalty over performance, and internal competition. It argues this creates strategic drift and continual escalation risk, threatening wider conflict between Russia and NATO. The Kremlin’s intelligence apparatus, instead of being purged after failures early in the 2022 Ukraine invasion, was expanded and resourced to conduct broader global covert operations beyond Ukraine, targeting Western public opinion, military aid, and security institutions. The report stresses that traditional Western responses based on resilience and sanctions might backfire as any imposed costs tend to validate Russian aggression rather than deter it. Effective deterrence, it concludes, requires imposing real strategic costs on the Kremlin to discipline the shadow warfare machine. The analysis draws heavily on historical Soviet doctrine, showing continuity in Russian strategic culture and paranoia about perpetual Western hostility, autocratic survival, and great power status at all costs. The report is part of CEPA’s ongoing project aimed to inform transatlantic strategies to counter Russia’s hybrid warfare.
Extended Summary: The Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA) report titled 'War Without End: Russia’s Shadow Warfare,' authored by Sam Greene, Andrei Soldatov, and Irina Borogan, outlines Russia's adoption of Soviet-era practices combined with modern covert tactics—including sabotage, cyber attacks, assassination, and political manipulation—as part of a persistent shadow warfare strategy. This approach aims to disrupt adversaries without provoking full-scale war, driven by a neo-Stalinist ideological framework that fuses internal repression with external aggression. The Russian intelligence agencies (FSB, GRU, SVR) operate centrally from the Kremlin and use layered deniability via proxies and criminal networks to impose multi-vector pressure on Europe and the wider West. The report highlights that this shadow warfare is a systemic machine where escalation is inherent due to absence of empirical success metrics, prioritization of loyalty over performance, and internal competition. It argues this creates strategic drift and continual escalation risk, threatening wider conflict between Russia and NATO. The Kremlin’s intelligence apparatus, instead of being purged after failures early in the 2022 Ukraine invasion, was expanded and resourced to conduct broader global covert operations beyond Ukraine, targeting Western public opinion, military aid, and security institutions. The report stresses that traditional Western responses based on resilience and sanctions might backfire as any imposed costs tend to validate Russian aggression rather than deter it. Effective deterrence, it concludes, requires imposing real strategic costs on the Kremlin to discipline the shadow warfare machine. The analysis draws heavily on historical Soviet doctrine, showing continuity in Russian strategic culture and paranoia about perpetual Western hostility, autocratic survival, and great power status at all costs. The report is part of CEPA’s ongoing project aimed to inform transatlantic strategies to counter Russia’s hybrid warfare.
The CEPA comprehensive report 'War Without End: Russia’s Shadow Warfare' (published November 19, 2025) details Russia’s strategic use of shadow warfare tactics that include severed cables, sabotage, assassination, cyber and information operations, transnational repression, and covert political influence. This covert warfare is centrally directed by Russia’s security apparatus (President, Security Council, FSB, GRU, SVR) and is ideologically rooted in neo-Stalinist doctrine viewing war as continuous. Russia aims to impose costs and disrupt Western societies and Ukrainian support without triggering full-scale war. The Kremlin’s intelligence agencies have expanded their operational remit beyond Ukraine into Europe and globally, employing proxies and criminal intermediaries to maintain deniability. Despite high-profile failures early in the 2022 invasion, Russia’s leadership chose institutional continuity over purges, emphasizing loyalty and institutional resilience. The lack of clear success metrics leads to acceptance of escalation and frequent exposure as strategic tools to intimidate and exhaust adversaries. The Kremlin’s system trades empirical success for narrative control, creating risks of uncontrollable escalation. The report warns that typical Western responses emphasizing exposure and sanctions may reinforce Russian aggression and calls for new deterrence approaches that impose strategic costs to restore discipline to Russia’s shadow warfare machine. The report reflects deep Soviet-era ideological and institutional continuities underpinning Russia’s hostile hybrid warfare campaign against Europe and NATO.
The report explicitly details hostile Russian shadow warfare tactics targeting Europe and NATO consistent with aggressive hybrid war operations, with named actors and explicit operational directives from the Kremlin.
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