Report

Responding to Russian sabotage financing

This report from UK think tank RUSI discusses how public and private sectors can leverage finance to address the sabotage challenge.

Europe faces a rising threat from sabotage that leverages social media, cryptocurrencies and a supply of disposable agents who are willing to take on a range of disruptive tasks in return for payment. While tools for addressing this threat exist within the arsenal of the EU and other Western countries, the deployment and coordination of responses do not adequately address the scale of the problem. Engaging more systematically with the financing of sabotage in Europe should be one avenue of response that is more urgently prioritised by the security authorities and private sector.

This paper is based on discussions held at an expert workshop held in Warsaw in November 2025 which grappled with two central questions: how is finance linked to sabotage, and how can the public and private sectors leverage finance to address the sabotage challenge?