Overview
- Senior intelligence officials told reporters that Russian agencies have stepped up efforts to obtain Western defense, dual-use and cutting-edge research technologies through more aggressive measures.
- Moscow is using fake companies, third-country intermediaries and recruited middlemen to buy restricted machine tools, software and equipment that sanctions bar from legal export.
- Russian cyber actors have moved from reconnaissance to more disruptive attempts against firms and critical systems, including a failed effort to damage a Swedish power facility.
- Law enforcement has begun to uncover concrete cases, with Swedish police arresting two people in May over shipments of metalworking machine tools linked to a Turkey-based supplier to Russia.
- Officials link the push to mounting wartime costs and sanctions, noting that roughly a third of Russia’s GDP now goes to the war effort and that large budget shortfalls are increasing pressure to secure banned technologies.