One man’s “partisan operations” is another’s state terrorism

This story is a neat example of how the media is willing to play along with some of the irrationalities of war. In fact, it isn’t simply “playing along”. The Western media is fully integrated into the corporate-financial system which controls Western societies. It is part of the structure.

Attacks on Russian railway infrastructure

For some considerable time there have been a series of stories in the Western media about sabotage to the Russian railway network. Some accounts attribute the attacks to Ukrainian “partisans” and others to “Russian opposition groups”. Here are some examples;

From The Kiev Independent March 2025: “The Atesh partisan group sabotaged a railway line in Russia’s Smolensk Oblast, disrupting the transport of military cargo toward Bryansk and…”

From “Euromaidan Press”: April 2025: “Ukrainian partisans have carried out a sabotage operation in Russia’s Kemerovo Oblast, destroying a transformer cabinet on a railway line, …”

The above two seem to be Ukrainian outlets. (When I see headlines popping up for them in Internet searches they invariably seem to be expressing extremely “pro-Ukrainian” positions). Kemerovo oblast is thousands of kilometres from Ukraine, in Siberia. While possible, I doubt the attack was carried by Ukrainians.

This is from AP News in March 2023: “After Russia invaded Ukraine, guerrillas from Belarus began carrying out acts of sabotage on their country’s railways, including blowing up track equipment …”

In April 2023 Newsweek published an article with the headline: “Meet the Russian Rebel Groups Waging War from within …” and a text: “Their tactics are similarly diverse, with some focusing on dismantling railroads while others claim raids from Ukraine into Russia and the killing of prominent …”

There are reports about Russian anarchist groups. This is from a US publication Foreign Policy in March 2023: “BOAK carried out several attacks of sabotage including an explosion that damaged a section of the Trans-Siberian Railway in Krasnoyarsk in early January.” BOAK is supposed to be a “Russian anarchist group”. [1]

(Note; in most of the above cases I am scraping the quotes off Google as most of the sites are blocked in Russia).

This is an article in Reuters from December 2024: “Russian officials have linked pro-Ukrainian sabotage groups with numerous attacks on railways aimed at disrupting supplies to the battle front in Ukraine since the war began in February 2022. Ukraine’s domestic spy agency has also been accused of detonating explosives on railway lines inside Russia. ” [2]

Who is actually carrying out these sabotage attacks on Russian railways?

If we believe the above assorted of Kiev media outlets and Western media the sabotage attacks on Russian and Belarusian railways are being carried out by: “pro-Ukrainian sabotage groups”, Russian anarchists, homegrown “guerrilla” groups, and, in some cases directly by Ukrainian intelligence.

I am willing to believe that some of the more sophisticated attacks involving explosives could have involved direct participation by Ukrainian special forces. But, many of these attacks are small arson attacks on vulnerable parts of the infrastructure. One article in Russian media, from February 2023 talked about 11 people having been arrested “recently” for railway sabotage, of whom 10 were teenagers. [3] This is another Russian news report, on Interfax, from January 2025, quoting the Interior Ministry. It appears to relate to the period since the start of the special operation to January 2025. It refers to 184 cases of railway sabotage involving 141 people of whom 59 were teenagers. [4] This is likely to be true, at least I take it as so.

This site has already noted that the Russian government or some agency is producing informational adverts aimed at teenagers to discourage them from accepting money online to carry out small sabotage attacks. The social media feed of a local special needs school I follow regularly publishes these. They are not stupid; people with with learning difficulties are especially vulnerable to the kind of approach which offers to give them money or things they want in exchange for carrying out acts of vandalism.

In short; while, no doubt, there are a range of different case scenarios, in a significant number of cases sabotage against Russian rail infrastructure is being carried out by teenagers recruited online by Ukrainian special services. This aspect of the story is absent from Western media. (The claim by Reuters that “Russian officials have linked pro-Ukrainian sabotage groups with numerous attacks on railways” was not sourced. I would suspect that Reuters simply made up the attribution to “Russian officials”).

Who is carrying out sabotage in the West?

The motivation for writing this article was a piece in the New York Times about alleged acts of sabotage in Lithuanian by a Ukrainian teenager. The teenager is charged with setting an incendiary device overnight in an Ikea store which caused a fire. [5] The teenager came from “the Russian speaking” part of Eastern Ukraine, but we are told that Lithuanian investigators believe the motive was money. Mr. Jauniskis claims the teenager was recruited, (possibly indirectly), by Russian intelligence to carry out acts of sabotage. Mr. Jauniskis, the director of Lithuania’s State Security Department is quoted as saying, “We talk about sabotage, but in reality this is state-supported terrorism.”.

A problem and a challenge for reason

The Lithuanians appear to be shocked by “Russian state terrorism”. But, all the evidence, is that both sides are engaged in this game; recruiting teenagers online to carry out attacks on the other side. (I am taking the Lithuanian claim of a link to the GRU at face value). I guess it is just too tempting an opportunity to pass up in this age of total global media communication.

This poses a challenge for reason. The problem is obvious. If this activity is “state terrorism” what should we say about out partners in Kiev, who appear to be doing it on a grand scale? Logically, the problem cannot be reconciled. If the one is “state terrorism”, so is the other. The answer for Western mainstream media is easy; we don’t report on it. We allow a propaganda narrative to be put out, (I would imagine originating from the same organisation in Kiev from where the sabotage operations are stimulated), that the sabotage attacks in Russia are being carried out by “partisans”, home-grown “anti-war opposition”, and so on. Kiev’s almost certain role in recruiting teenagers online is suppressed.

This connects to a wider problem for the West, especially Europe, in regards to their support in general for Kiev. The regime in Kiev, (which has postponed elections), has shut down opposition media and banned one of the main political opposition parties, (The Communist Party), this latter a “flagrant violation of freedom of expression” according to Amnesty International, – these actions before February 2022. It is likely that if we get into the business of looking for war atrocities they will not turn out to be lily white. There is widespread corruption in their state sector. (In the sense of bribe and kickback taking). We could talk about their suppression of Russian language rights in Eastern Ukraine prior to 2022. This one is admitted in the Western media narratives, very occasionally, but very much minimised. And, then of course, there is the Nord stream pipeline. Once it became apparent that it was a Ukrainian operation the official investigations ended and media reporting ceased abruptly. And, it is almost certain that they are engaging in a programme of recruiting vulnerable teenagers at scale to commit acts of sabotage in Russia. These are a set of actions of the government in Kiev which definitely do not align with the normal standards of Western European liberalism with its espoused respect for a free press, minority rights, political pluralism, anti-corruption, and not sabotaging your neighbour’s pipelines.

The regime in Kiev is generally presented as a beacon of democracy and “freedom” but, in the words of Mr Jauniskis, the director of Lithuania’s State Security Department, they are, (logically speaking), engaged in “state terrorism”. It just seems to me fundamentally stupid to label actions carried out by one side “state terrorism” and simply ignore similar actions carried out by “your side”. Rather than this kind of stupidly we would be better off considering exactly what is the nature of the “regime”, (in the sense of directing coalition of forces), which we are sponsoring in Ukraine. Are we 100% sure they meet our values? And this opens up another question; what is happening to European liberalism?

The direction of travel of the EU

It is really out of the scope of this small post, but there is another, bigger question here. The central EU powers, and the UK, appear to be allowing themselves to be led, and EU policy to be formed, by the smaller, much less economically significant, and often vociferously anti-Russian, Baltic States. There appears to be some kind of shift in the EU, with top policy statements quite aligned with the very anti-Russia agenda of the Baltic States; for example in the same New York Times article, a former Lithuanian Foreign Minister, Gabrielius Landsbergis, is quoted as saying, “The belief that Russia’s aggressive intent does not extend beyond Ukraine is just wishful thinking.” and it is this view which seems to be driving, for example, von Der Leyen’s 800 billion debt driven rearmaments drive. However, it is not clear how actually successful this will be. While this is the official line from the top, it seems that not all countries in the EU are, in practice, and in terms of their actions on board. For example Kaja Kallas recently did not succeed in getting joint agreement on a large new EU package for Ukraine. [6] It will be interesting to see how this plays out in terms of EU unity going forwards. Will the EU as a whole orientate itself around the anti-Russia rhetoric of the Baltic states, and their more (жестокий) harsh political approaches and anti-Russia stance, or will it become more fragmented, with individual states in the centre and South, retaining their liberalism and eventually even restarting full trade with Russia? John Mearsheimer, if I understand correctly, predicts something like the latter; with countries going more their own way.

Notes

One man’s “partisan operations” is another’s state terrorism

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