NATO Foreign Ministers wrapped up two days of meetings in Brussels on 4 December 2024 by vowing to address the increasing incident of sabotage and other hostile actions being inflicted on NATO countries.
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte stated that “both Russia and China have tried to destabilise our countries and divide our societies with acts of sabotage, cyber-attacks, and energy blackmail”.
Rutte noted that the foreign ministers had agreed a set of measures to counter Russia’s hostile and cyber activities, including enhanced intelligence exchanges, more exercises, better protection of critical infrastructure, improved cyber defences, and tougher action against Russia’s ‘shadow fleet’ of oil-exporting ships. He further stressed that NATO “will work closely together with the EU on these issues”.
Rutte underscored that the increasing alignment of Russia, China, North Korea and Iran highlights the global nature of the threats faced by the alliance, including the escalating dangers of the ongoing war in Ukraine. He noted that in return for troops and weapons, Russia is providing North Korea with support for its missile and nuclear programmes.
“These developments could destabilise the Korean Peninsula and even threaten the United States, so Russia’s illegal war in Ukraine threatens us all,” said the secretary general.
A series of parcel fires in July 2024 targeting courier companies in Poland, Germany and the UK were Russian ‘dry runs’ aimed at sabotaging flights to the United States and Canada, according to Polish prosecutors. Fires broke out in a container due to be loaded on to a DHL cargo plane in the German city of Leipzig, at a transport company near Warsaw, and at a DHL warehouse in Birmingham, UK. Western security officials have determined the fires to have been part of an orchestrated campaign by Russia’s military intelligence agency, the GRU, to bring down transatlantic cargo aircraft.
On 17 and 18 November 2024 a Chinese bulk carrier, Yi Peng Three, is suspected of severing two undersea cables – one linking Sweden to Lithuania and the other between Finland and Germany – by deliberately dragging its anchor along the seabed for more than 160 km.
Moscow and Beijing have respectively denied responsibility for the incidents.
