As Europe confronts the return of large-scale warfare on the continent, it also faces a more covert and insidious threat: Russia’s strategic use of criminal networks as a tool of hybrid warfare. Criminal groups are no longer operating on the margins - they are embedded into the Kremlin’s foreign policy to conduct sabotage, evade sanctions, and erode societal cohesion. This criminal-state alliance, rooted in Soviet-era practices and reinforced under Putin’s regime, reflects a deliberate model of statecraft that merges intelligence services, oligarchs, and transnational crime networks to realise geopolitical objectives and achieving hybrid warfare aims.

This report explores how actors like these weaken democratic institutions from within, exploiting legal grey zones and undermining public trust. Europe can no longer afford to ignore this hybrid threat. A unified, intelligence-driven response is urgently needed to defend its democratic foundations.