The Long Shadow of Soviet Sabotage Doctrine?
Boris Nikolaevich Rodin was a known entity in the KGB. Operating as an intelligence officer in London from 1947 to 1951, he helped manage the defection of Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean — members of the notorious Cambridge Five spy ring of British double agents who secretly passed critical information to the Soviet Union in the first half of the 20th century. Better known under his alias “Korovin,” he was also intimately engaged in recruiting another one of Her Majesty’s greatest traitors — one George Blake, a Secret Intelligence Service officer who volunteered to spy for the Soviets after being captured in the Korean War. In the early 1960s, this veteran agent runner took on his last assignment in the KGB as head of the Thirteenth Department — dedicated to planning sabotage operations against the Kremlin’s most loathed adversaries. Together with allies in Prague and East Berlin, during the Cold War, Moscow devised dozens of plans to attack or disrupt Western targets.
Thanks to recent discoveries in the Czech Security Service Archive, we are now able to reconstruct the doctrine that informed the Soviet Bloc’s way of sabotage for much of the 20th century and draw parallels with the myriad suspected sabotage attacks we have seen in Europe and the United States since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. While several defector accounts, government, think-tank, or journalist investigations have provided a glimpse into the world of Putin-era sabotage, we still know precious little about the history of the Kremlin’s plans to use of this destructive tool of statecraft. This is a problem as the sabotage operations we are seeing play out today seem to mimic Moscow’s Cold War doctrine in important ways. A careful examination of the formerly top-secret Czechoslovak security and intelligence files suggests that today’s choice of target states is led by a similar rationale as during the Cold War. The intensity of attacks continues to be determined by level of escalation. The types of operational targets being hit today all feature on the Soviet Bloc’s Cold War sabotage list. And, finally, while we are seeing important technical tweaks to outsourcing and recruitment, Moscow continues to rely on so called “agents-saboteurs” to carry out these high-risk operations. These parallels are striking — and if Vladimir Putin decides to follow the Cold War playbook diligently, more is yet to come.
Sixty years after Rodin headed the KGB’s sabotage enterprise, in 2024, mysterious fires have been ravaging civilian and military facilities across Europe. They follow other seemingly random incidents damaging fiber-optic cables, railway systems, GPS signals, department stores, and ammunition manufacturing plants across Europe that have escalated in frequency following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Most recently, three high-speed rail lines in France were sabotaged before dawn on the day of the opening ceremony of the Olympics. Targets in the United States have also recently taken hits, with a major explosion damaging an ammunition plant in Pennsylvania in April and another deadly explosion hitting a weapons plant in Arkansas in July. While in some cases the target countries are still determining the cause or searching for culprits, Poland, Germany, the Czech Republic, and Denmark have arrested individuals connected to these attacks. What is more, with various levels of confidence, these governments have openly declared Russia responsible.
More than two years into the war in Ukraine, the threat of Russia-sponsored sabotage continues to loom large over Western security. NATO has set up dedicated cells to monitor and protect critical infrastructure. Some governments are introducing new legislation, while others are updating their national security strategies to appreciate the severity of the threat. The continent’s spies and law-enforcement officers now closely liaise with partners over cases of arson or suspicious ship movements. The public has been asked to remain vigilant.
Exporting Sabotage
During the Cold War, the Soviet Union’s military intelligence organization (GRU) and its civilian security and intelligence organization (KGB) each sported their own “special purpose” unit and force. These sabotage outfits were led by a distinct set of principles and plans designed to use so-called “kinetic means” to hit their adversaries where it hurt most. In the 1960s, the KGB exported its sabotage doctrine and helped set up similar highly clandestine outfits in partner states, East Germany and Czechoslovakia included.
The foreign branch of the Czechoslovak State Security Service established a dedicated sabotage unit in April 1963. The so-called Special Purpose Service (Služba zvláštního určení) was arguably set up as a reaction to the 1961 Berlin Crisis and the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, which represented a significant escalation in East-West relations. As detailed in the April 1963 statute of the Special Service, the unit was designed to “prepare and carry out diversion, sabotage, marauding, and other operations, aimed at disrupting the adversary’s economic and military potential during the time of peace, but primarily during war, with the aim of supporting the foreign policy and security of the world socialist system.”
To get a head start, the State Security Service held numerous meetings with their Soviet counterparts, who had by now set up their own dedicated sabotage outfit within the KGB. As detailed in a memo from August 1964, Soviet sabotage-masters encouraged their allies to not commit most of their plans to paper due to their sensitive nature. Their Czechoslovak counterparts, however, did not listen — noting down statutes and minutes of meetings as well as archiving detailed operational plans, sabotage manuals, photos, and postmortems of explosion tests. Thanks to their diligence, three decades after the end of the Cold War, we get a front-line view of the Soviet Bloc’s sabotage doctrine: the motives, their choice of targets, and who they entrusted with executing the missions.
Demoralize, Downgrade, and Undermine
According to the doctrine that the KGB shared with their Czechoslovak counterparts in January 1963, the objectives of sabotage operations were threefold. They were to be deployed against the adversary to disrupt policies and military plans seen as antagonistic to Moscow’s interests. In an ideal scenario, sabotage operations would demoralize the government’s resolve to pursue these policies or undermine public support for them. The Kremlin also saw sabotage as an effective instrument to undermine the unity of the enemy camp. On the one hand, Soviet Bloc spymasters hoped to sow discord among national political parties. On the other, they also thought it a powerful tool to generate strife within NATO — French-American, Greek-Turkish, and British-German tensions were to be exploited and amplified. Finally, as the KGB spymasters told their allies, on a tactical level, sabotage was considered an effective way to cause economic harm or undermine military capability — an objective particularly crucial during times of escalation or all-out war.
While all adversarial states were fair game, at the same meeting in 1962, Moscow encouraged its partners to focus on countries that hosted institutions representing Western power, such as Belgium where NATO sported its headquarters and military command. France and Germany were singled out as top targets due to their perceived pivotal roles in any potential Western-led war. If other states were deemed vital to Western war strategy, they would also be added to the list. With harder or global targets, such as the United States, Moscow’s spies suggested hitting their assets elsewhere — ideally in Latin America.
Operational Targets
The KGB also presented their allies with a detailed typology of operational targets. Typically, these would include energy supply systems such as electric power plants or fuel supply systems, specifically pipelines or refineries. In the 1960s, Czechoslovakia’s sabotage unit developed plans to attack oil pipelines across the German River Iller, one of Europe’s more important waterways, the Rhine, and the Le Havre-Paris pipeline operated by Trapil.
Communication infrastructure, including railways, bridges, tunnels, ports, and highways, was also at the top of the list. The objective was to either physically attack these targets or disrupt their signaling and control systems. They focused on Europe’s two largest ports in Rotterdam and Antwerp. Apart from their significance to Western European industry and commerce, they were also singled out for their role in transporting goods to South Vietnam during the height of the war.
Other worthy targets included telecommunication systems such as telephone hubs, cables, or radars. Their destruction, especially during wartime, would impede the enemy’s ability to mount a coordinated counterattack. Objects of key public and industrial importance were also on Moscow’s radar. Drinking water reservoirs, chemical plants, or warehouses — such as one underground storage facility in Mechernich, West Germany — were earmarked for potential sabotage.
The Czechoslovak State Security Service took inspiration from manuals detailing the use of industrial explosives developed for agricultural purposes, namely that of ammonium nitrate. [Security Services Archive (Archiv bezpečnostních složek), Czech Republic, First Directorate Files, reg. no. 11792/113; MTH 22250.]
Military facilities and sites were a key focus. Weapons of mass destruction facilities would be as closely watched as those designed to provide shelter from a potential attack. Government nuclear bomb shelters, such as one located in the West German district of Ahrweiler, were to be put under surveillance, as were the systems that managed their ventilation or water supply.
Soviet Bloc sabotage-masters were also keen to strike against Western special forces units designed to conduct partisan warfare behind enemy lines in the event of a Soviet invasion of Europe. These units were closely reconnoitered with the aim of learning about them, learning from them, but also developing them as potential targets. The U.S. 10th Special Forces Group, located in Bad Tölz and Lenggries, affectionately codenamed by the Czechoslovaks as “The Killers,” was selected as a target, as was one of the French Army’s elite units, the 11th Parachute Brigade, based in Calvi-Corsica.
Finally, sabotage plans were also devised against what Moscow considered to be Western propaganda hubs or “psychological diversion” centers. The headquarters of Radio Free Europe in Munich was a key target, as were the dozens of dissidents from across the Soviet Bloc who worked for the broadcaster.
These kinetic operations were to be matched with various “active measures” — propaganda stunts or disinformation — designed to force-multiply. Coupled with destructive sabotage operations, they could further amplify existing fissures within Western societies and politics, instigate unrests, spread panic, and thus undermine government credibility or sway public opinion in favor of anti-imperialist actors.
Between Peace and War
Remarkably, the nature of each act of sabotage would be determined by political context and level of escalation. In other words, there was a doctrinal separation for each stage of tension. According to detailed guidelines of the Special Tasks Service laid out in October 1966, an operation mounted in peacetime would differ from one carried out during times of crisis, escalation, or all-out war. In times of peace, Soviet Bloc sabotage planners focused on smaller-scale, subtle attacks designed to appear as accidents. These could be technical disruptions on transportation lines, random fires, or seemingly accidental biological or chemical contamination. More destructive operations, which would bear hallmarks of deliberate state-based acts, were to be mounted on a more extensive scale during escalation or all-out war. There was a doctrinal separation for each level of tension.
The Culprits
A complicated ecosystem of intelligence officers and agents was deployed to carry out these highly sensitive operations. This was outlined in the Special Tasks Service’s statute approved by Minister of the Interior Lubomír Štrougal in April 1963. According to this document, during peacetime, the top of the sabotage operations pyramid was reserved for officers specifically trained in running sabotage missions. They were stationed at embassies in target countries under diplomatic cover and tasked with running a network of illegals — deep-cover officers stationed abroad. The illegals were trained to identify suitable targets, develop operational plans, identify vulnerabilities, and handle explosives. During times of escalation or war, the statute detailed, they would typically step up to the top of the pyramid and replace legal cover officers who were often known to their adversaries and typically expelled during crises.
The base of the pyramid was made up of a complicated network of agents run by the illegals. Each would contribute to the operation in a unique way. Illegal agents — Soviet citizens or foreigners recruited, trained, and provided with foreign identity documents — were to settle in a target or a third country to aid the preparation for sabotage operations. This network further encompassed “support agents” who took care of the security and viability of sabotage units on enemy territory and “agents keepers” who provided safe houses and cover addresses. For the purposes of sabotage, “access agents” — security guards, engineers, or telephone operators — were key to acquiring information on otherwise inaccessible targets.
Finally, a special cast of agents — “agents-executioners” or “agents-saboteurs” — would be hired to carry out the operation. They were typically run and recruited abroad, but Moscow and its allies also kept a reserve at home ready for deployment in the event of war. These were to be reliable, capable, courageous individuals with some knowledge of handling various means of sabotage — were they of chemical, biological, explosive, or arsenous nature. For each operation, these so-called “destructive means” were either prepared in the Soviet Bloc by specialists, or agents-saboteurs were trained in devising their own. Typically, these agents would be activated via radio, coded letter, courier, or by an assigned illegal.
The Long Shadow
While during the Cold War, Soviet bloc spies stopped short of carrying out these daring plans, the attacks Europe has been grappling with since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine seem to mirror Moscow’s Cold War-era sabotage doctrine in important ways. They are directed against those NATO member states that are most crucial or supportive of the Ukrainian war effort — aka those most adversarial to Russia. They have intensified at a time when the West upped the ante by increasing its financial and military support for Ukraine and consented to its weapons being used on Russian territory — developments the Kremlin views as an escalation. They are accompanied by active measures or what could be termed as “strategic vandalism,” exemplified by the recent “coffin affair” in Paris, arguably staged by Russia to undermine France’s increased support for Ukraine.
The modus operandi we are seeing today also appears to mimic the KGB’s Cold War plans. The types of targets being hit across Europe all feature on Moscow’s list from 60 years ago — be they directly linked to the West’s support of Ukraine’s war effort, or of a purely civilian nature. Agents-saboteurs — individuals with no formal links to Russia’s secret state — continue to be recruited to carry out these missions, albeit the means by which they are approached, directed, or compensated have arguably changed, democratized and migrated to cyberspace. Despite this shift, however, as Joshua Rovner observed in 2022, we have not yet seen a more strategic pivot to high-impact cyber sabotage — which would requires exceptional skill, organization, investment, and a necessary dose of luck.
What Happens Next?
These parallels suggest that the long shadow of the Soviet sabotage doctrine continues to guide Putin’s way of covert war. If this is indeed the case, more is yet to come. Agents-saboteurs could be redirected to hit political targets including government or political party headquarters. They may also seek to strike sensitive security installations or intelligence training schools. Next in line might also be media outlets or investigative hubs critical of the war. Further proliferation to Western targets in the Global South would also be on brand. If tensions increase, so will the intensity and force of Moscow’s sabotage effort.
Which of this galaxy of targets will the Kremlin choose to strike next depends on capacity, capability, and priorities — whether these are more tactical, aimed at undermining the West’s war effort, or rather strategic, aimed at sowing discord and spreading panic in the West. Putin’s actions, however, do not exist in a vacuum. They will be determined by developments in the Ukraine War. Moreover, what the other side does will also be key: whether Ukraine will escalate its use of conventional or irregular warfare on Russian soil; how the West will choose to respond, individually or via NATO; as well as how well each side will read their opponent’s escalation thresholds.
Daniela Richterova, Ph.D., is an associate professor in Intelligence Studies at the Department of War Studies, King’s College London. She specializes in the history of Cold War espionage, covert action, and state relations with terrorists and revolutionaries. Her new book, Watching the Jackals: Prague’s Covert Liaisons with Terrorists and Revolutionaries, comes out in January 2025 with Georgetown University Press. Twitter: @dRichterova.
Image: The Central Intelligence Agency via Wikimedia Commons
