Europe’s spies are finally taking off the gloves to face Putin ...Middle East

It’s spy season in Europe.

Sweden has announced a new foreign intelligence agency; Germany is going on the offensive; the UK is luring Russians to spy on the Kremlin.

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine prompted a political sea-change in how European countries viewed Vladimir Putin‘s Moscow – and their own defence. The second presidency of Donald Trump only exacerbated that understanding.

For decades, Russia has honed its skills in the dark arts of espionage. Now, at long last, the continent is starting to take off its gloves when it comes to the murky world of spying.

But with many countries playing catch-up with enemies and allies alike, they will need to move fast.

Europe is overhauling its spying operations

Across Europe, intelligence services are transforming. Estonia devoted substantial attention to Russian sabotage and intelligence activity in a report last year, while Poland has placed greater emphasis on counter-intelligence and Russian hybrid warfare.

Notably, Sweden announced this year that it would create a new foreign intelligence service, Utrikesunderrättelsetjänsten (UND), which would take over select foreign intelligence and covert responsibilities from the existing Military Intelligence and Security Service (MUST). The service begins operations in January.

Sweden’s decision followed the major and embarrassing failure of MUST, which ruled out the possibility of a Russian invasion shortly before it kicked off. Britain and the US, on the other hand, were among the earliest to warn Ukraine about Putin’s plans.

The 2022 invasion prompted a major restructuring within the French agency DGSE too after it similarly failed to predict it. The agency now pays close attention not just to Russian military capabilities and pan-Europe activity. 

Meanwhile Germany is only just adding an offensive dimension to espionage. Germany previously faced tight constraints thanks to post-war limits in light of its Nazi legacy. Last month the government approved a draft law aimed at lifting many of the restraints on its spy agencies. The law will enable it to hack Russian targets, use AI, and secretly disable explosives or tamper with equipment being used in an attack. 

The reform will give agencies the ability to operate in other countries “including being able to conduct acts of sabotage such as offensive cyber attacks,” said Dr Lucia Frigo, a researcher at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs at Leiden University. It would allow Germans to engage in active cyber defence “to ‘hack back’ foreign service providers and install spyware,” she said.

“It is high time we positioned ourselves to be competitive and on an equal footing with our partner services around the world,” said Germany’s Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt. “This requires operational capabilities and active powers to tackle modern state terrorism and extremist groups more effectively”.

The James Bond factor

Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, SIS or MI6, long seen as the best on the continent, is now viewed as a model by allied nations.

Some of the credit perhaps goes to James Bond, but the agency has an excellent reputation. It was voted the most powerful foreign intelligence service in Europe, ahead of France, Germany, and the Netherlands, in an internal peer review this year. The Swedish Foreign Minister, Maria Malmer Stenergard, said this year that its new agency would be emulate MI6.

The UK has also benefited from close collaboration with America’s Central Intelligence Service (CIA) over the years.

“The British have the ability to play the long game, investing in sources over a 10-year horizon, somewhat like the Russians. And they have a taste for dirty tricks,” said a former head of the DGSE, the French secret services.

Europe is building an ecosystem of government and private sector partnerships to counter the Russian threat. Britain has long engaged with the private technology sector as emerging technologies become critical to national security. Sweden is following suit, and will strengthen AI capability and co-operation with startups and the venture capital industry.

“The British have a tradition of working with private companies to advance national security,” said Rolf Rosenvinge, a cybersecurity expert and executive who currently serves as the Chief Strategy Officer at Truesec, a Nordic cyber security firm. “In that sense, we are aligning with their way of operating”.

MI6 is transforming too. The UK established the National Cyber Force in 2020, bringing together the Ministry of Defence, MI6, and the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory to disrupt adversaries.

Last year, the outgoing chief of MI6, Sir Richard Moore, announced a new platform called Silent Courier that would make it easier to recruit Russians to divulge secrets securely online.

Europe needs to move faster

But Europe needs to move faster to deter Russia.

Countries that did not foresee a Russian invasion had to shift their focus very suddenly, experts told The i Paper. In democracies there is more administration to navigate and questioning from watchdogs against possible overreach — something that will not halt the Kremlin.

Richard G Whitman, Professor of Politics and International Relations at the University of Kent and a senior fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, said growing digitisation and globalisation, which had made work much harder for intelligence agencies, with fewer borders the state can control; hostile actors not always able to be physically spotted and arrested; and anyone able to spread disinformation online.

It is a long road ahead with many challenges. European countries may still find it hard to share “juicy” intel with each other and may get caught up in intra-agency rivalry at home.

Sweden’s Ministry of Defence, which leads the existing intelligence agency, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which will lead the new foreign intelligence agency, are already at loggerheads over control of a top-secret unit, the Office for Special Acquisition.

But Europeans are acutely sensitive to the fact that they face threats across multiple domains from Russia, and may not have the US coming to their aid. That makes co-operation between EU countries and the UK essential.

Last month, for the first time, both the UK and EU sanctioned Russian entities that are part of Russia’s FSB for planning a decade-long cyber espionage campaign.

“This is reacting decisively,” said Frigo. “It is clear attribution, clear consequence, and a public display of a united front,” she added, emphasising a change in attitude toward the Russian threat and growing European collaboration.

Whitman added: “The real driver is that the US perspective on the threat Russia presents to Europe is different from how Europeans see it.”

And when it comes to matching Moscow, Europe will need to be sophisticated, technologically nimble – and armed with an increased appetite for risk.

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