I know it’s popular in the west these days to attribute anything that goes wrong in their countries as being Russia’s fault, but this level of paranoia is genuinely absurd and funny. Like seriously, Putin is personally ordering Russian spies to … do arson attacks on random IKEA stores?

Although attribution is often difficult, and some incidents will have nothing to do with Russia

One would think that the statement that follows this would be something like “on occasion, conclusive evidence has been found of Russian spies committing petty acts of vandalisim”, or something like that. But no, there isn’t even a pretense of there being any sort of evidence in this article. It just says “it is clear”, and vaguely references a UK intelligence officer (what a trustworthy source!)

Unlike the USSR, Putin’s Russia is essentially post-ideological.

Meaningless statement (post-ideology does not exist), and also demonstrably false given that Putin very openly adopts a Christian and a nationalist position/policy.

hard-left anticapitalism

Ah, so it’s that thing where the self-proclaimed “moderates” pretend that everyone who opposes them and their socio-economic agenda is secretly a Russian agent. Got it.

such as the placing of cameras along Polish railway lines on which aid to Ukraine flows.

Mixing incidents of what are likely legitimate spying with random petty crime does not mean that the random petty crime was also some Russian plot.

It also contributes to another Kremlin (and, indeed, Chinese) talking point, that removed western democracies simply don’t work.

The poverty and dysfunction of western societies is not the fault of the scary foreign boogeymen.

This also highlights another virtue of this new strategy for the Kremlin: it encourages and mobilises our own paranoia.

Lmao the article itself is fueling this paranoia.

The answer was — and is — not to let that panic us or force a change in policy: to keep calm and carry on.

This is something Europeans are failing spectacularly at.