Russia is already waging a multi-front shadow war against Western democracies, with recent hybrid incidents across Europe forming a clear pattern, argues Christopher Walker, vice president of the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA).
“We have to take this very seriously because in a sense this is a full-spectrum integrated form of war that includes conventional, shadow, and transnational repression forms of warfare,” he says in a wide-ranging interview with Independence Avenue Media.
Walker says that preventing Russian President Vladimir Putin from succeeding in Russia’s war against Ukraine is paramount.
“If [Putin] were to be successful or to feel himself to be successful in that enterprise, he surely would not stop with larger military ambitions to Ukraine’s West,” Walker says.
Russia’s ambition, Walker says, is to fracture NATO and the wider alliance between the United States and Europe — so in response, the West should be united in pushing back and stepping up its countermeasures.
“There needs to be sufficient cohesion,” he says. “There really isn’t an alternative. The alternative is to continue to slip further behind, to be further cognitively intimidated, and to suffer further, and likely escalating, forms of kinetic warfare.”
He thinks decision-makers in Moscow who initiated Russia’s shadow warfare should get “a meaningful response that they understand.”
“Responses to any given act of shadow war in a country in the NATO space [should] be something that is sufficiently disproportionate to get the other side’s attention and make them see that it’s actually not in their interest to continue to wage these shadow war efforts,” he says.
This interview was recorded on Oct. 1, 2026, and has been edited for length and clarity.
Kiryl Sukhotski, Independence Avenue Media: Christopher, in your article [with Alina Polyakova] in The National Interest just a few days ago, you argued that Russia is already waging war against the West. So what do some people miss when they discuss Russia’s escalation in Europe?
Christopher Walker, vice president of the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA):
I think the pattern is clear. And sometimes the multitude of episodes of drone attacks, sabotage, rail line intrusions and subsea cable intrusions can appear to be ad hoc or disparate episodes, but the reality is these are forming a pattern, and it’s part of a larger concerted campaign that I think only now is starting to come into clearer focus.
And when you see it this way, you recognize that the seemingly random episodes are actually something much more dangerous. And I think this is what the public and open societies are starting to come to grips with.
IAM: So you argue that we’re missing the forest for the trees here — but what is Russia trying to achieve?
Walker: I think the longer-term objective that we see — both through what we call Russia’s shadow warfare, but also ongoing operations in the information domain, through other vectors like education and culture — is actually designed to divide the West and divide Europe within the European Union, but most fundamentally to divide the United States from Europe. And I think these efforts are done to wrong-foot countries and to try to get what are natural allies to work less effectively together.
IAM: Have Russians been successful in doing that so far?
Walker: Well, I think it’s a mixed story. On the one hand, the alliance has, through all the friction we’re observing that’s hard to miss, still remained committed to Ukraine’s success. And I think this is terribly important because a large part of Russia’s ongoing shadow war activities are designed to induce doubts about the support for Ukraine, to raise questions about whether sustained support for Ukraine actually makes sense and is doable.
Of course, in the end, Ukraine’s success is integral to the security and prosperity of Europe and the larger transatlantic alliance. We should make no mistake about that. But Russia’s larger ambition is to raise doubts and ultimately fracture the solidarity within, and between, the United States and Europe.
IAM: And then to achieve what?
Walker: I think the ultimate goal, which is not simply one that’s emerged since 2022, is to crack the transatlantic alliance. I think Vladimir Putin has made this quite clear. And this would enable him to pursue even larger geopolitical interests. The most obvious one right now is the unprovoked attack and ongoing war against Ukraine.
We should also make no mistake here. If he were to be successful or to feel himself to be successful in that enterprise, he surely would not stop with larger military ambitions to Ukraine’s West. Even now, when you pull back the lens and look at the extent to which these shadow war operations across Europe have been underway, this is a part of a larger war that is, in a sense, we argue in our report, multiple fronts on the same fight that the Kremlin is waging.
It is the full-scale conventional war in Ukraine now in its fifth year. It’s shadow warfare in the way we’ve defined it across Europe. And it’s also ongoing attacks on anyone who opposes the Kremlin — this is often manifested through transnational repression against dissidents, opposition media outlets and other figures who are challenging the Kremlin’s position.
We have to take this very seriously because in a sense this is a full-spectrum integrated form of war that includes conventional, shadow, and transnational repression forms of warfare, one could argue.
IAM: When Vladimir Putin sees the absence of this coordinated pushback, when he sees a fragmented approach to hitting back, when he thinks that there is a restraint on the part of the West to give a meaningful response — can he actually escalate further from that low-level shadow warfare that you’re describing, to actually a higher-level warfare, and expand his battlefield in Europe?
Walker: It’s a terribly important question. I think the reality is that Russia has been escalating over a protracted period of time already. If one goes back to the annexation of Crimea, which the Western allies struggled to respond to and didn’t deter on the front end, I think it’s fair to say with hindsight that the Russian leadership decided that they could try to subjugate all of Ukraine — and in fact started this attempt in 2022.
Now, that has been a massive strategic mistake by the decision-makers in Moscow, given Ukraine’s resourcefulness, its innovation, its courage in rebuffing the military attack. But I think it’s fair to say that the ongoing war being waged by Russia is a form of escalation, as are the intensifying growing number of shadow war activities which are kinetic.
So these armed drones, sabotage attempts, unsuccessful assassination attempts on captains of German industry, for example, successful attacks on Russian oppositionists — I think all of these things speak to an ongoing willingness for the authorities in Russia to escalate, which really means that in the end the allies will need to find ways to impose significant enough costs to start to change the thinking in Moscow.
IAM: And how can NATO do that with the help of the United States? How can they draw those red lines for Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin, so they understand where those red lines are?
Walker: So there’s no single response that will do the trick in this instance. It’s going to take greater coordination in a sense. At one level, the approach being taken by Russia, along with its loose allies in North Korea, China, Iran and Belarus, now constitutes quite a concerted ongoing campaign. And in a way, this is a time for the democratic allies to think in a concerted campaign mindset as well.
So it requires a mind shift at the very top order level. And then below that, it will require responses that will be far more serious, for example, in putting comprehensive financial pressure on the elites in Moscow, as well as Beijing, so it gets their attention to recognize that there are serious costs.
There’s also an opportunity, and a real need to take the information competition much more seriously because what Russia does quite effectively, in many settings over time, is to cognitively intimidate audiences and decision-makers in key countries that are suffering the blows from Russia’s intensifying shadow war.
And then, as a part of this package of integrated responses, to then be determined and consistent and resolute in the sort of responses that make it clear to Russia’s decision-makers that all these acts of shadow war will be responded to in a meaningful way.
What that means in any given case should be left up to the principal decision-makers, but it could be that responses to any given act of shadow war in a country in the NATO space would be something that is sufficiently disproportionate to get the other side’s attention and make them see that it’s actually not in their interest to continue to wage these shadow war efforts, and to not want to suffer the costs themselves that right now are not sufficiently high.
IAM: Could you give an example or two of those disproportionate, as you say, responses that Russians could understand and that so far they are not seeing?
Walker: Well, it could be in principle something that emerges from a suspension of services of one kind or another in the digital domain, something along these lines. And it doesn’t necessarily need to be the case that would be in response to the sort of cyberattacks that are now routine coming from Moscow.
I think the key in these responses is that the initiators of the shadow warfare, the decision-makers in Moscow, understand that when they’re waging these acts, there will be a meaningful response that they understand. And I think it’s fair to say that over time, this has not been adequately recognizable from those that are escalating right now in Moscow.
IAM: And the key question, of course, here, is there enough cohesion in the West, in the alliance to work out that coordinated approach?
Walker: Well, the bottom line there is there needs to be sufficient cohesion. There really isn’t an alternative. The alternative is to continue to slip further behind, to be further cognitively intimidated, and to suffer further, and likely escalating, forms of kinetic warfare — that may not be open conventional warfare of the sort we’re seeing in in Ukraine, but nevertheless is intensifying physical forms of warfare across Europe, that is bound to escalate and intensify in the absence of sufficient cohesion and responses.
So my response to that is there really is no alternative. And my expectation is that we will see deepening cohesion over time to meet the challenge.
IAM: So far we have heard President Trump and others in the administration saying a few times that it’s Europe’s war to fight, and we are, you know, an ocean away. Is responding to this rise in Russia’s threat in the U.S. national interest? And have you seen any sort of movement in the White House, in the administration, to recognize that?
Walker: So we’re in the midst of a protracted debate in the United States, but I would say in many other democracies too, over how much we invest internationally and where in security terms, and how that relates to domestic investments. This is a part of our contemporary political picture. It’s a part of the zeitgeist.
In the end, Europe’s security is integral to transatlantic security. A meaningful cohesive response to the growing threat posed by Russia’s ambitions that includes the attack on Ukraine, the growing shadow war in parts of Europe — this is integral to the United States and all of Europe for a variety of reasons.
Some of it is the enormous investments that European interests and firms continue to have in the U.S., the enormous financial stakes that the U.S. has in Europe, and then the security stakes that are there.
As I noted earlier, if Russia is not deterred at this stage, where it hasn’t felt deterred over more than a dozen years in a visible way, we will all pay the price. So U.S. interests are squarely connected to the successful deterrence of Russia. And my expectation is that the U.S. will not lose its footing over time on this issue.
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IAM: And the U.S. obviously has other adversaries, including Iran and China. How does that play into the U.S. policy towards Russia and Ukraine?
Walker: Well, one of the things we noted in another report we released earlier this year called “The China-Russia Meta-Threat” is that it’s impossible at this stage to divorce the relationships, the depth of support, and the ambitions of these dictatorships that include Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, and then other such partners like Belarus.
There are now thousands of North Korean troops supporting Russia’s war effort in Ukraine, both fighting, by all accounts, but also critically learning methods of modern warfare — as are, as we understand it, Chinese observers, military advisers, and others. And so we’re already seeing the deep integration of powers from other geographic locations into the war fighting on Russia’s behalf In Europe — there’s no other way to say it.
And so the relationship that these ambitious, determined dictatorships have to weaken the democracies and otherwise advance their own regime interests in this instance is crystal clear.
I think what the free societies need to recognize in today’s environment is that we really don’t have a choice other than to work together, even if we have these unignorable frictions and tensions that everyone can clearly see. In the end, it’s in all of our interests from the perspective of defending freedom that we find a meaningful way to work together.
So, to the extent the United States has other equities — which of course it does — these have to be seen in an integrated way, because Iran, North Korea, China are all supporting Russia’s effort in Europe, where the United States has massive interests, and we need our allies’ help elsewhere to fight these larger battles. There’s only one way to do this successfully over time, and that’s to work together in a meaningful and collaborative way.
IAM: And you were arguing in that report that you just mentioned that the United States should treat those challenges by Russia and by China as one challenge, and not as two separate ones. How much coordination do you think there is between Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping in their face-off against the United States?
Walker: Well, it’s always hard to know with exact precision the extent of these relationships, but I think we can look at some of the things that are visible to us. One of those is simply the extent to which the two leaders have met. And by at least our reckoning, that is something on the order of 70 times in person or virtually since 2012 when Vladimir Putin returned to the Russian presidency and when Xi Jinping assumed paramount power in Beijing as the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, among other titles there.
So I think that indicates that they feel it’s important to meet personally that many times, and by many accounts, they have developed a rapport. They seem to be on the same wavelength. I’ve called it a shared consciousness they have about the way the world should be ordered. This would include things like states being in the driver’s seat to the exclusion of private business, independent actors, independent media.
This is clearly a part of their worldview that they are looking to see through not only within their borders, but critically for all of us, for everyone beyond their borders. This is a big part of the story today. Now they’re not seamless in working perfectly together, but I think they’ve mobilized their respective regimes and their resources in ways that are quite collaborative — that very few people anticipated to this degree from the vantage point of 15 years ago, certainly.
IAM: And Christopher, coming back to Europe — when we look at some of the statements and actions by countries in northern Europe, be it the Baltics, the Nordics, Poland, they seem to be preparing for a wider war that Russia may wage in the region. And we’ve seen reports by Denmark’s intelligence services the other week where they said that they expect a rapid rise of hybrid attacks from Russia in the next several months. Do they know more than the rest of Europe and the United States do? Or are they too paranoid about Russia’s threat?
Walker: I think it’s important to say at the outset that the Baltic states in particular have been the most clear-minded in their analysis of the threat posed by Russia over many decades. And so I think it’s worth paying particular attention to the assessments that come from that part of Europe.
Today, with Finland and Sweden as part of the NATO alliance, I think, with very incisive analysis from that region overall, we have to take that very seriously. Those countries, broadly seen, I think are properly identifying real threats without exaggerating them. And I think they’re looking to prepare both their own populations in a proper way, but also signal to other parts of Europe that either for geographic reasons, or historical reasons may not have as clear a vision to the level of threat.
This is not anything new. I think there’s always been differentiation in threat perceptions across the alliance on these kinds of things. It’s true also for China today across Europe. Some countries, in my view, have a much clearer-eyed assessment of the China challenge, the China threat.
And so finding the balance between properly alerting and preparing populations without creating alarm or feeding into alarmist Russian information operations is tricky business. But in my view, the leadership in the countries in northern Europe are doing quite a good job on that to date.
