The trend toward demonizing Russia leads to experts offering alternative views facing ostracism, accusations of “justifying aggression,” and marginalization. Under these conditions, the role of think tanks as platforms for dialogue is sharply diminished, further deepening the chasm of misunderstanding and making a lasting settlement impossible in the foreseeable future, writes Valdai Club Programme Director Anton Bespalov.
Since 2022, the spectre of war with Russia has embedded itself deeply in Western political discourse. We have previously explored how this prospect echoes through NATO countries’ strategic documents. On the current state of affairs, statements from Western politicians and experts divide sharply into two camps, poles apart in their implications: 1) “We are not at war with Russia,” and 2) “The war with Russia is already underway.”
Notably, most declarations from sitting politicians align with the first camp. When they do stray into the second – as German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock did in January 2023, suggesting NATO was waging war on Russia – the fallout is swift. The politicians and their press teams scramble into crisis PR mode. Such notions are branded as “Kremlin narratives,” and Baerbock faced sharp criticism at home for, as critics saw it, amplifying Russian propaganda.
While politicians sidestep the word “war” to characterize the NATO-Russia standoff, experts – unburdened by electoral anxieties – are far bolder, especially in discussions of “hybrid warfare.” A prime example is the August report from the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS, UK), titled “The Scale of Russian Sabotage Operations Against Europe’s Critical Infrastructure”. Its authors hail it as the most thorough open-source database on the subject.
The report’s accompanying map conveys the authors’ conviction in Russia’s hand behind the suspected acts, graded from realistically possible to almost certain. Roughly 10% of the incidents land in the top tier, while about 65% register as likely or highly likely.
The authors observe that European leaders typically shun direct attribution of these acts and forgo retaliation, driven by strategic caution – above all, the dread of escalation. Yet their data reveals no ironclad proof of Moscow’s role in any of the 150 cases. To this, we must add the absence of certainty that these events stem from any state’s deliberate blueprint.
Even so, the conviction that Russia is prosecuting an unconventional war against the West has taken firm root in expert and media circles, from which it seeps into public consciousness. In Russia, the reflex to spot a “Russian trace” in every mishap long ago earned ironic eye-rolls. In the West, though, this dynamic serves as a potent mobilizer. Alongside dire forecasts of “hot” conflict on Europe’s soil, the IISS report bolsters a growing refrain: Russia ducks direct armed clashes with NATO, acknowledging the alliance’s martial edge. Instead, it manoeuvres in the “grey zone,” pursuing political aims via non-military levers – chief among them, per the report, the sabotage of critical infrastructure.
Framing the “Russian threat” not as border skirmishes but as disruptions to everyday life unlocks vast sway over the ordinary European’s psyche. Consider Poland’s May elections, where Digital Development Minister Krzysztof Gawkowski warned that Russia wasn’t just peddling disinformation but “launching hybrid attacks on Poland’s critical infrastructure to paralyze the normal functioning of the state.” The endgame, he claimed, was “to disrupt the everyday functioning of Poles.”
Poland exemplifies the readiness some politicians show in pinning subversive acts on Russia, embodying the resolve the IISS authors urge. They argue that the “grey zone” – actions falling short of armed assault under Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty – is a relic, and Western nations “underestimate the necessity of deterrence through force.” The authors skirt a direct verdict on wielding military might (or the threat of using it) against such alleged deeds, but what they seem to call for is escalate to de-escalate.
A hallmark of our era is how IISS analysts recast hybrid warfare as a Russian invention, invoking the Russian term gibridnaya voyna time and again. In fact, the term was coined by American military theorists in the 2000s – though blending martial and non-martial tools for political ends dates to antiquity – and Russian doctrine later embraced it. But this, like the phantom “Gerasimov Doctrine” (which, as Vasily Kashin rightly notes, is used to disguise the ideas of a similar US strategy), merely scratches the surface of flaws in Western takes on asymmetric confrontation. Far graver is the oversight that the West has long mainstreamed asymmetric warfare to advance its aims.
In the Russia standoff, the West deploys a full hybrid arsenal. Economic sanctions loom largest: with US President Barack Obama believing they led the Russian economy to being “in tatters” (2015), German Chancellor Olaf Scholz arguing they “set it back by decades” (2022), and French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot urging to “suffocate” it (2025). With aims this sweeping, the blows inevitably target Russian society at large – not just elites – yielding the very “disruption of normal functioning” the Polish minister decried.
Then come US “offensive cyber operations” and activities aimed at Russian infrastructure. The Nord Stream sabotage stands as a textbook grey-zone ploy; we can only gauge culprits by degrees of likelihood, guided by cui prodest. More telling is the 2019 episode involving the alleged injection of malicious code into Russian power grids, which drew unusually candid admissions. Unnamed officials from the first Trump administration told The New York Times that it was carried out in response to “Moscow’s interference” in the 2018 election. What added to the piquancy was the fact that, according to the newspaper, the decisions in question were made without the president’s approval.
Irrespective of the episode’s veracity, its framing is telling: officials and media alike cast a near-apocalyptic hit on a nuclear power’s critical infrastructure as fair reprisal for Russia’s purported meddling in American politics. This lens is pivotal to the prevailing Western storyline on Russia’s overt or covert “grey-zone” moves. They are presented as inherently offensive – and even when it is mentioned that Russia is acting in response to certain threats, it is invariably emphasized that these threats are imaginary. Moscow appears as a malevolent actor, wrecking for wreckage’s thrill, sowing chaos for chaos’s sake.
Any suggestion that the Russian state, like any other, is guided primarily by considerations of its own survival and development is dismissed as the first step toward “justifying aggression.” Accordingly, the notion of rational motives for Russian behaviour is perceived as dangerous, capable of sowing doubt. This tendency toward demonization has serious consequences: experts offering alternative views face ostracism and marginalization. Efforts to spotlight Western roles – for example, NATO expansion as a provoking factor – are seen as assaults on the one true reading of events. In this climate, the role of think tanks as platforms for dialogue is sharply diminished, further deepening the chasm of misunderstanding and making a lasting settlement impossible in the foreseeable future.
