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Western officials have accused Russia and its proxies of staging dozens of attacks and other incidents across Europe since the invasion of Ukraine three years ago, according to data collected by The Associated Press.

They allege the disruption campaign is an extension of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war, intended to sow division in European societies and undermine support for Ukraine.

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The alleged disruption has a double purpose, James Appathurai, the NATO official responsible for the alliance’s response to such threats, told the AP.

One is to create “political disquiet” and undermine citizens’ support for their governments and the other is to “undercut support for Ukraine,” said Appathurai, deputy assistant secretary-general for Innovation, Hybrid, and Cyber.

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The cases are varied, and the largest concentrations are in countries that are major supporters of Ukraine.

Some incidents had the potential for catastrophic consequences, including mass casualties, as when packages exploded at shipping facilities in Germany and the U.K. Western officials said they suspected the packages were part of a broader plot by Russian intelligence to put bombs on cargo planes headed to the U.S. and Canada.

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European authorities are investigating several cases of damage to infrastructure under the Baltic Sea, including to a power cable linking Estonia and Finland. Finnish authorities detained a ship, suspected of being part of Russia’s “shadow fleet” used to avoid sanctions, after that cable and others were damaged.

When a fake French Defense Ministry website claimed citizens were being called up to fight in Ukraine, a French minister denounced it as Russian disinformation. German authorities suspect Russia was behind a campaign to block up scores of car tailpipes ahead of national elections, according to a European intelligence official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.

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Countries have always spied on their enemies and long waged propaganda campaigns to further their interests abroad. But since the invasion of Ukraine, Moscow has become “bolder,” hitting the West with sabotage, vandalism and arson in addition to the tactics it previously used, including killings and cyberattacks, said Elisabeth Braw, an expert on the attacks at the Atlantic Council in Washington.

“The way you can weaken a country today is not by invading it,” she said.

China has also been accused of espionage and cyber operations in Europe, and The Wall Street Journal reported that Ukrainian authorities were responsible for blowing up the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines in 2022. Kyiv has denied this.

“Multiple countries engage in hybrid operations,” said David Salvo, managing director of the Alliance for Securing Democracy at the German Marshall Fund. “Russia is the overwhelming culprit in Europe.”

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A forensic analysis of Statistics Canada data on the composition of recent inflation confirms that fossil fuels haven’t protected Canadians from affordability problems. In fact, fossil fuels were the biggest single cause of those problems.

The 2022 spike in global oil prices, channeled immediately into higher prices for fossil fuel products sold in Canada, was by far the biggest single factor setting off post-pandemic inflation. From January 2021 through June 2022 (when inflation peaked), consumer prices for fossil fuels grew 81 per cent. Prices for fossil fuels used as inputs by businesses grew even more, by 127 per cent.

The direct costs of higher fossil fuels caused almost half of all consumer price inflation in that time—and more than half of inflation over the Bank of Canada’s two per cent target. Add in the indirect costs faced by businesses in other industries (from agriculture to transportation to construction) for their fossil fuel purchases, all passed on to consumers, and the dominant role of fossil fuels in the inflationary surge is clear.

This will be shocking news to Canadians who blamed the carbon tax, or immigrants, or Justin Trudeau personally, for inflation and affordability challenges after the pandemic. It’s no accident that vested interests—from the oil industry to the Conservative Party—have tried to divert Canadians’ righteous anger toward those scapegoats. They don’t want us to know where the true problem originated.

Since that price spike did not reflect fundamental economic factors (like supply and demand, or cost of production), it fed directly into the profits of petroleum corporations around the world—including in Canada. Canadian oil and gas operating profits grew by $151 billion (compared to 2019 levels) from 2022 through 2024.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/23510483

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mysharona1987 posts:
[screenshot of a tweet]
@iamthedunce tweets:
Vampires don't live in castles, Count Dracula lived in a castle because he was a count, not because he was a vampire.

iamnmbr3 replies:
this feels like a sensitivity training for how to not commit micro aggressions against vampires in your workplace