A few weeks ago, the German magazine Compact warned that the actions of the West will lead to the expansion of the armed conflict outside Ukraine. In the opinion of the magazine’s experts, the arms shipments that the United States is transferring to Ukraine, including the advanced M142 HIMARS MLRS, in addition to other heavy weapons will contribute to the escalation of the armed conflict and spread violence outside Ukrainian territory, specifically inside Russian territory, and may lead to the intervention of new parties in the conflict. Despite the promises of Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky not to use heavy weapons against Russian territory, the facts indicated repeated targeting of Russian territory through missile strikes on Russian areas adjacent to the border with Ukraine.               

Acts of sabotage, a new level of confrontation

But what German experts did not expect was that the spread of the conflict would take the form of acts of sabotage outside Ukrainian territory. Recently, Ukrainian subversive groups entered Russian territory and carried out several acts of sabotage against Russian civilian and military facilities. In mid-August, a series of explosions rocked areas in the Russian Crimea in the Mayskoye district near the city of Dzhankoi, and affected an ammunition depot and railway generators, in addition to explosions that affected a Russian military base.

Last May, Russian forces thwarted an attempt by a Ukrainian subversive cell to infiltrate from Kharkov in eastern Ukraine to the Russian regions. And the Russian forces announced, "that they spotted a group of unmarked gunmen who were moving in a forested area, and that they asked the group to drop their weapons, but they responded with firing at the Russian troops, which led the Russian forces to clash with them and liquidate the squad."

The Belarusian security forces had previously thwarted an attempt by Ukrainian subversive groups to infiltrate Belarusian territory, and had thwarted the attempt. These are added to a series of other attempts by the Ukrainians to send groups to carry out sabotage acts targeting civilian and military facilities inside Russian territory.

Assassination of Daria Dugina

These acts of sabotage took a dangerous turn on the night of Saturday, August 20, 2022, when Daria Dugina, 30, the daughter of the famous Russian thinker and philosopher Alexander Dugin, fell victim to an assassination by booby-trapping her car. At first glance, everyone thought that the target of the bombing was Alexander Dugin, a philosopher who vocally opposes liberalism and who presents a theoretical framework that contradicts liberal thought by calling for adherence to heritage and tradition as opposed to indulging in liberal postmodern values. What reinforced this hypothesis is that Western liberal thinkers and Western decision-making circles have over the past years demonized Dugin, portraying him as the new theorist of fascism, despite the contradiction of this accusation to the facts, the most important of which is the Russian philosopher’s proclamation that his thought contradicts the nationalist and racist thought that characterized the Western conservative, liberal, and even leftist Western thought. 

But investigations proved that the target was Daria Dugina, a Russian journalist active in the field of anti-Western imperialism and supporting the Russian operation in Ukraine. It was found that the perpetrator of the act of assassination was Natalia Vovk, a Ukrainian, born in 1979, who works for the Ukrainian Special Operations Service. Vovk had arrived in Moscow on July 23, accompanied by her daughter, Sophia Shaban, and rented an apartment in the building where Daria resides to monitor her. Natalia used a Mini-Cooper car and changed its plates several times before carrying out the assassination. On Saturday night, she attended the camp, which was being held by the Eurasian Movement headed by Dugin, and she may have taken the opportunity to plant the device in Daria's car to detonate it while the participants were leaving after the camp ended.

The Impact of Daria’s assassination 

The seriousness of the act of Daria's assassination lies in targeting a journalist who has turned into an icon and a public figure in Russia. This indicates that sabotage operations led by Ukrainians are no longer limited to targeting military or even civilian facilities, but rather that the Ukrainian decision-makers have decided to move the battle to another level and to target Russian civilian figures who may not be directly related to the Russian military operation in Ukraine. In this context, we can expect the Ukrainian intelligence to target Russian public figures such as artists, painters, ballerinas or writers, and the Ukrainian intelligence could target civilian facilities to inflict the largest number of civilian casualties, such as targeting commercial complexes, shopping centers, institutes, etc. 

The danger also lies in the possibility of the Ukrainian intelligence targeting what it considers as Russian interests in the world, such as targeting embassies, consulates, cultural centers, commercial institutions and even ordinary Russian citizens. There have been several attempts of aggression in a number of countries around the world, including threats against representatives of diplomatic missions as happened in the Netherlands, or attempts to attack Russian citizens as happened in Cyprus. These actions may not be limited to targeting Russian citizens, but may be directed against anyone who is a friend of Russia or sympathizes with the Russian stance regarding Ukraine or other issues. For example, a number of Lebanese personalities, who tendered their condolences to Alexander Dugin on his Facebook page, received threats, noting that the perpetrator of the assassination had lived for a while in Lebanon, where a significant Ukrainian community lives. 

Western Europe arena of conflict between Ukraine and Russia?

What increases the possibility of these attacks is that Western propaganda has been able to form a public opinion in the West and the world that is incubating the idea of ​​demonizing Russia and everything that is Russian. The best evidence of this lies in the campaigns against Russian athletes, musicians, scientists, doctors and citizens, in addition to the campaign against Russian literature embodied in the prohibition of teaching the works of Russian writers such as Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Gorky and others in Western universities, and the prohibition of concerts of Russian composers such as Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov. This contributed in the formation of a Western public opinion in favor of any action committed against Russia and its friends. The most evident example of this was expressed in the comments made by Western citizens that supported the assassination of Daria, as well as other terrorist acts against Russian interests.

As experts of the German magazine Compact warned of, the conflict in Ukraine could spread to other regions in the world, especially Western Europe. According to these experts, Kiev has so far proven its inability and lack of credibility in negotiations with the Russian side to end the conflict in Ukraine. To make matters worse, Washington is encouraging Kiev not to negotiate with Moscow and to continue the conflict "until the last Ukrainian," as US and Western experts say. Rather, Washington is pressuring European countries to work with Kiev to aggravate the situation with Moscow by providing the Ukrainians with weapons and equipment, and by turning their lands into a crossing for foreign mercenaries who want to go to fight against Russia in Ukraine.

This has in fact made Europe backstage for the ongoing hostilities in Ukraine. WITH The formation of the Ukrainian intelligence subversive groups to target Russian interests around the world, and with the spread of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian refugees around the world, this would facilitate the work of the Ukrainian intelligence in targeting Russian interests outside Ukraine. As a result of the transfer of quality weapons from the United States and Western European countries to Ukraine without any controls, there is a danger that these weapons, with the blessing of the Ukrainian intelligence and political leadership, will be transferred to the hands of the aforementioned sabotage groups, which proves the validity of the German experts’ hypothesis that the conflict may move to outside the Ukrainian territory, primarily to Western Europe.