European countries should prepare to face more threats to their energy infrastructure from Russia and Russia-aligned hackers, a former CIA analyst warned in a report first shared with Semafor.
In late December, a wave of Russian cyberattacks hit energy facilities across Poland, a sign that Moscow may be willing to expand its energy campaign beyond Ukraine as a means of testing NATO cohesion, Chelsea Cederbaum, now a senior threat intelligence analyst at the cybersecurity firm Recorded Future, said. And as Russian President Vladimir Putin grows frustrated by slow progress in Ukraine and anticipates a post-midterms political landscape in the US that may be less inclined to favorable dealings with Moscow, “there’s a high risk of escalation by Russia over the next two years.”
That’s unlikely to include large-scale bombings of the kind seen in Ukraine, Cederbaum said. But, she wrote in her report on Russia’s new hybrid war tactics, it could include cyberattacks coordinated across wider regions of Europe’s grid, drone flights close to critical infrastructure, and Kremlin-sponsored digital disinformation campaigns designed to paint European countries as unprepared. Europe’s rapid pivot to US gas imports and renewables has, however, eroded some of Moscow’s historic ability to leverage its fossil fuels for political coercion.