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Sabotage Attacks Inside Russia Surge 88% as Moscow Expands Covert Operations Across Europe
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![Photo of Ivan Khomenko]( "Photo of Ivan Khomenko")
Russia recorded 242 suspected sabotage incidents on its own territory in the first ten months of 2026, surpassing the combined total for the previous two years, as Moscow continues to face accusations of organizing arson attacks and covert operations across Europe.
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According to an investigation published by the OSINT community InformNapalm on November 7, the number of publicly documented sabotage incidents inside Russia has increased by approximately 88% compared with all of 2025.
The findings come from InformNapalm’s Fire OSINT database, which has tracked incidents across Russia since the beginning of Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Researchers documented 242 incidents between January 1 and November 6, 2026, compared with a combined 239 incidents throughout 2024 and 2025.
In total, the database contains 569 documented sabotage incidents since February 2022. The recorded operations include arson attacks against railway signaling equipment, military recruitment offices, telecommunications towers, and other infrastructure facilities.
The figures exclude Russian-occupied Ukrainian territories, as well as Ukrainian drone and missile strikes, which are recorded separately.
InformNapalm emphasized that the database documents incidents reported through open sources and does not establish that Ukrainian intelligence services organized every operation. Some attacks may have been carried out independently by underground resistance groups.
The increase in incidents inside Russia coincides with continued investigations into suspected Russian sabotage operations targeting European infrastructure and defense manufacturers.
In August 2026, an arson attack targeted a facility belonging to Estonia’s Milrem Robotics, a manufacturer of unmanned ground vehicles supplied to Ukraine. On September 29, Estonian authorities announced that their internal security service had established that Russia commissioned the attack.
A separate investigation in Romania uncovered an alleged Russian-coordinated sabotage network following a September fire near the CARFIL defense manufacturing facility in Brașov.
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According to InformNapalm, researchers from the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism and GLOBSEC had documented more than 180 Russian sabotage incidents across Europe by the end of September, including completed, unsuccessful, and prevented operations.
Investigators have also identified cases in which perpetrators filmed arson attacks for subsequent use by Russian propaganda outlets, suggesting that some operations were intended to generate both physical damage and information effects.
Earlier, on November 4, Ukrainian partisans from the ATESH movement reported sabotaging a power substation supplying Russia’s Voronezh aircraft plant, which produces and repairs Il-76 military transport aircraft. The group claimed the operation destroyed a transformer and disrupted electricity supplies to the facility.
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