How Russia Makes Power Plays in European Politics

Several of Russia's hybrid warfare tactics against the West were on prominent display this past week, as U.S., U.K. and Dutch authorities exposed a campaign by the Russian military intelligence agency known as the GRU to conduct a cyberattack against the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, a global chemical weapons watchdog based in the Hague. Russia has proven itself skilled and active in conducting cyberattacks and poisonings, but amid these types of high-profile cases is a more subtle, ongoing aspect of Russia's hybrid warfare strategy: the effort to support conservative, far-right and anti-liberal movements in the West and Western-leaning states. As demographic and immigration pressures become more pronounced in Europe, Russia is seeking to use such pressures in its bid to foster divisions within the West and slow or even prevent states throughout the European borderlands from joining the European Union or NATO....