June 19, 2026: Three years ago a Russian espionage operation in Britain ran afoul of local incompetence and mixed signals from the FSB/Federal Security Service. It all began in 2022 after the Russian invasion of Ukraine as Russia ordered the revival of its espionage network in Britain. The effort was organized by Jan Marsalek, an Austrian businessman living in Russia to avoid prosecution for economic crimes. Marsalek still had a large number of contacts in Europe and was able to hire six Bulgarian men to carry out pro-Russian and anti-American operations in Europe. This was meant to reduce support for the war in Ukraine. Marsalek’s plan failed and his six Bulgarians were arrested in Britain before they could start their campaign.

Some success was achieved via online efforts, but these were redundant because pro-Russian propaganda was already being spread on the internet by Russian citizens and their western fans. This was not the first Russian propaganda effort in Europe and was only the latest one to fail. Since 2022 Russia has spent over half a million dollars trying to establish espionage and propaganda operations in Europe. Not much success, mainly because the European counterespionage organizations were able to detect and disable Russian operations.

One part of Europe, according to the Europeans, was Ukraine, which Russia considered part of Russia. Since the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 Ukraine has been subject to an ominously large amount of Russian network reconnaissance of Ukrainian networks and growing Russian Cyber War attacks. None of this was a major news story and that was typical for the massive Cyber War campaign Russia has carried out against Ukraine in 2022.

Russia has always been considered a major Cyber War threat. Since the 1990s Russian Internet based espionage has been very active and effective. That led to fears of a Cyber Pearl Harbor. Russia had hoped for such a daring and damaging attack on Ukraine but was disappointed because Ukraine had looked for and noticed the Russian preparations. Before and after the first Russian attack in 2014, Ukraine had been receiving more military aid and assistance from NATO countries. Ukraine and NATO Cyber War experts agreed that an international effort, including the major American providers of Internet infrastructure and services had to be involved. This meant Amazon, Cloudflare, Google, Microsoft and several smaller but essential Internet services or security firms had to be involved.

It is not known for sure if Russia was aware that this international coalition of Internet infrastructure and services was involved with defending Ukraine. This organization came to be known as Cyber NATO because most of the major resources came from NATO nations.

Microsoft was the oldest of these Internet giants and the one that pioneered large scale, organized and highly responsive efforts to deal with hackers operating at the consumer level or against national Cyber infrastructure. These Internet giants increasingly cooperated in Cyber defense. When Ukraine and NATO governments went looking for Internet industry help and cooperation, they found that their inquiries and requests were welcomed. Ukraine took advantage of this in 2016 when they established their Ukrainian National Cybersecurity Coordination Center. This operation played a key role in coordination and synchronizing the Western efforts or forming a large-scale effort to detect and block Russian Cyber War activities against Ukraine, or any NATO nation.

Before 2022 Russia had a reputation for being a formidable threat as a practitioner of Cyber War. So far in 2022 the Russian reputation as a military power has been much diminished along with their standing as a Cyber War threat. While Russian military activities were widely reported on by the media, much less attention was paid to the similar defeats Russia suffered as they sought to carry major Cyber War campaigns against Ukraine even before Russian troops crossed the border. The Cyber War defeats continued throughout 2022. Russia had a formidable arsenal of Cyber War weapons and pre-planned attacks, especially against Ukraine.

Like many other capabilities, that reputation was tarnished and diminished during the recent war in Ukraine. For Russia the defeats were frequent and victories few in this network battle space. Russian defeats began the day before Russian troops crossed the Ukrainian border and continued during the first months of the war as Russian unleashed most of their pre-planned attacks designed to do maximum damage to Ukrainian networks and Internet-based capabilities. Ukraine knew what its key Internet vulnerabilities were and, with the assistance of Cyber NATO and the major American Internet services and security providers, the Russian efforts were blocked. China, the other Cyber War threat to NATO and the West, took note.

This sort of large-scale coordinated Internet defense was always theoretically possible and now the main Cyber War threats, Russia, China, North Korea and Iran, saw it in action. That changed the Cyber War strategies of all these aggressor nations. At the moment, the best the Internet threat nations can hope for is that the defense coalition grows less effective over time because the defenders might believe they have the problem solved and major investments of time and effort in defense are no longer necessary. That would be a mistake because the benefits of effective Cyber War weapons expand as more of the world becomes dependent on Internet based services.

By the end of 2021 Ukraine had created a network of half a million software engineers, information specialists and other experienced Internet users to deal with Russian Cyber War attacks as well as carry out information campaigns worldwide to let the world know what was really happening in Ukraine. The Ukrainian efforts were successful and this resulted in Ukrainian attacks against Russian networks and propaganda. The existence of these formidable Ukrainian Information and Cyber War capabilities is another reason NATO is eager to have Ukraine join the EU/European Union and after that NATO. Ukraine is already a founding member of Cyber NATO.