Researchers on Friday said that Poland’s electric grid was targeted by wiper malware, likely unleashed by Russia state hackers, in an attempt to disrupt electricity delivery operations.
A cyberattack, Reuters reported, occurred during the last week of December. The news organization said it was aimed at disrupting communications between renewable installations and the power distribution operators but failed for reasons not explained.
Wipers R Us
On Friday, security firm ESET said the malware responsible was a wiper, a type of malware that permanently erases code and data stored on servers with the goal of destroying operations completely. After studying the tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) used in the attack, company researchers said the wiper was likely the work of a Russian government hacker group tracked under the name Sandworm.
Royal Navy warships and aircraft were activated to shadow Russian naval vessels during a two-day operation in the English Channel, the UK Ministry of Defence confirmed, as Russian forces transited waters near Britain en route to the North Sea. Portsmouth-based patrol ships HMS Mersey and HMS Severn were deployed alongside a Wildcat helicopter from 815 […]
Japan confirmed that a Russian IL-20 intelligence-gathering aircraft conducted a surveillance flight near the country’s western approaches on January 23, according to Defense Minister Shinjiro Koizumi. In a statement released on Friday, Koizumi said the Russian aircraft flew from the continental direction into the Sea of Japan, proceeded southwest, then changed course off the coast […]
Ethiopia has confirmed the acquisition of Russian-made Orion-E reconnaissance and strike unmanned aerial vehicles, marking the first verified export of the Orion drone system, according to aircraft displayed at Aviation Expo 2026. A Russian Orion-E unmanned aerial vehicle was shown in the Ethiopian Air Force exhibition area during the event, confirming that Addis Ababa has […]
Russia used Tu-22M3 Backfire-C bombers to launch a salvo of heavy Kh-22/Kh-32 cruise missiles toward the Kyiv region on January 24, marking the first recorded use of these weapons against targets near the Ukrainian capital. Ukrainian air defense forces reported that Russia fired 12 Kh-22 or Kh-32 missiles toward a target on the outskirts of […]
Security researchers have attributed the attempted use of destructive "wiper" malware across Poland's energy infrastructure in late December to a Russian-backed hacking group known for causing power outages in neighboring Ukraine.
Russia has used export-version surface-to-air missiles intended for foreign customers to strike ground targets in Ukraine, according to an investigation published Friday by Defense Express. Fragments recovered after recent strikes show that Russia fired 48N6E2 missiles, an export variant of the long-range interceptor used by the S-300PMU2 Favorit and S-400 air defense systems. As reported […]
A little token that few people had heard of a year ago has become a big mover of money. Reports say the A7A5 stablecoin, launched as a rouble-linked coin, has processed the equivalent of $100 billion in transfers since it began moving at scale.
Elliptic Finds Rapid Growth And Large Volumes
According to analysis by Elliptic, A7A5 grew quickly after its launch and was used heavily for settlement between firms that could not rely on regular banks. The firm traced huge daily flows, with transaction totals rising into the billions and aggregate transfers passing major milestones.
Origins And Backing
A7A5 was set up in a way that tied it to rouble deposits and to a handful of private entities connected to Russia’s financial network.
Reports say the project was linked to a payments group and to banking partners that have been under western scrutiny. Some of the people and firms behind the token were later sanctioned by authorities in the US and the UK.
How The Money Moved
Transactions were concentrated on a small number of exchanges and on on-chain routes that made cross-border transfers possible without the usual banking rails.
In practice, the coin served as a bridge into other stablecoins and crypto markets. That routing let trade keep moving even when formal channels were closed to certain actors.
A7A5 Stablecoin Role In Sanctions Evasion Claims
Reports note that regulators and analysts view those flows as a tool that could help avoid sanctions. Regulators in several countries have taken action against linked platforms and individuals after patterns of transfers were uncovered.
Some of the design choices around the token made monitoring harder for a time, and in a few cases tokens were reissued in new wallets to muddy traces.
Market Reaction And The Wider Impact
Markets noticed. The token’s market cap surged, and exchanges that handled it saw sharply higher volumes.
Ordinary traders were not the main users; activity was often timed with business hours and weekdays, which suggested corporate or institutional flows rather than retail swaps. This type of pattern changed how people outside the region looked at crypto as a payments tool.
Authorities responded by blacklisting some addresses and platforms and by stepping up enforcement against those named in the network.
The moves show that a token can move a lot of value, but it can also draw regulatory heat and prompt countermeasures that affect every participant in the chain.
Featured image from Pixabay, chart from TradingView
Blockchain analytics firm Elliptic’s report shows that Russia’s ruble-backed stablecoin A7A5, launched last year to help evade sanctions, has processed over $100 billion in transactions in less than a year.
Russia-based cross-border payments firm A7 LLC launched the stablecoin in January 2025 to circumvent Western sanctions. It claims a 1:1 backing by ruble deposits held at Russian state-owned Promsvyazbank (PSB).
Per the report released on Thursday, the stablecoin issued on Ethereum and TRON blockchains processed nearly 250,000 on-chain transactions from 41,300 distinct accounts.
“Transaction numbers increased significantly in late September 2025, due to the introduction of the ability to purchase A7A5 with PSB bank cards,” Elliptic noted.
In June 2025, Cryptonews reported that A7A5 crossed over $9.3 billion in transactions on crypto exchange Grinex.
The stablecoin helps facilitate sanction evasion by functioning as a 1:1 ruble-backed “safe harbour,” even though Tether’s USDT became the primary crypto asset for Russian sanctions evasion.
A7A5 Stablecoin Hits $100B Transactions – Here’s How
The asset, which is currently listed only on Uniswap, has a market cap of more than $540 million, per CoinMarketCap data.
Further, the Elliptic data shows that 35,500 accounts now hold the stablecoin, an increase from the 14,000 in July 2025.
“Total A7A5 exchange volumes have now reached $17.3 billion,” Elliptic added. “The primary trading pairs, A7A5/rubles ($11.2 billion) and A7A5/USDT ($6.1 billion), highlight the stablecoin’s primary role as a bridging asset between rubles and USDT.”
Stablecoin Supply Stalled Amid Heavy Western Sanctions
Besides, the stablecoin activity is currently showing signs of stalling after heavy sanctions by the US, UK and EU on Russia-linked cryptos. The Western sanctions were imposed on Russia, targeting finance, energy and goods, since the nation’s full-scale Ukraine invasion.
“Despite relatively high transaction volumes, there are indications that demand for A7A5 has stalled,” Elliptic report noted. “There are just over 42.5 billion A7A5 in circulation, with a US dollar value of $547 million.”
Additionally, the transaction volumes have dropped from a peak of over $1.5 billion per day to around $500 million per day.
THE KREMLIN FILES / COLUMN — Russian hybrid warfare, often referred to in the West as “gray zone” conflict, has transitioned from theoretical concept to prominent headlines, particularly following the invasion of Ukraine and the Kremlin’s campaigns of sabotage, disinformation, and targeted intelligence actions across Europe and the U.S. What defines Russian-style gray warfare, or hybrid war? What are its doctrinal roots, and how well do these foundations align with assumptions in Western security discussions? To explore these questions, this article analyzes the writings of Russian military thinkers and the views of Russian military and intelligence agencies—covering their terminology, doctrines, and their evolving grasp of non-kinetic conflict.
This is the first in a two-part series by Sean Wiswesser on Russian gray zone, or hybrid warfare
Gray zone operations in the West are generally seen as actions that influence the course of a conflict or harm an adversary without crossing into direct kinetic attacks. For Russia, at the core of the gray zone is the concept of “non-contact war” (bezkontaktnaya voina), which is part of a larger doctrinal framework under which gray warfare, also called “new generation warfare” by the Russians, falls. This is not a new concept in Russian military thinking, but it has developed over decades. By examining its evolution over the past thirty years through Russian sources and military thinkers, we can better understand how Moscow uses these concepts today—and how they influence the conflicts we may face now and in the future, enabling the U.S. and our allies to respond more effectively.
There are two main components of Russian gray warfare. Russians rarely use the term hybrid war, which exists in Russian only as a borrowed term from English. The first concept is non-contact warfare - the concept of preparing and softening the battlefield, then minimizing ground engagements for their troops whenever possible. The second concept is Russian intelligence active measures, also known as measures of support. This is also an old idea in Russian intelligence circles, but one that has been expanded and intensified in recent decades, incorporating new elements such as cyber operations and cognitive warfare.
We will briefly discuss each of these concepts below, along with Russia’s gray-zone developments up to its deployments into Ukraine in 2014. In the second part of this series, we will analyze Russia’s doctrine as it was applied in the years immediately leading up to and through the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, while also considering another key factor for Russia—their ability to evolve and adapt.
Non-Contact Warfare: Origins and Russian Military Necessities
Non-contact warfare developed from what the Russian General Staff and other military thinkers called sixth-generation warfare. The concept grew from the “reconnaissance strike complex” theory and the so-called “revolution in military affairs” at the end of the Cold War. As the Soviet Union disintegrated and the U.S. demonstrated overwhelming air power with NATO and other allies during the Persian Gulf war, former Soviet and Russian generals were not fools. They understood they could not keep pace with the new advancements in air warfare and the technological edge of NATO weapons systems.
Russian General Staff thinkers recognized that the Russian Air Force could not match TTPs (techniques, tactics, and procedures), the number of pilot training hours, or the advanced systems that the U.S. and NATO could field, especially given their significantly reduced military budget following the Soviet Union's collapse. This operational shortfall was further emphasized by the targeted bombing campaigns and overwhelming force deployed by U.S./NATO forces in the Balkan campaigns of the mid-1990s.
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In short, Russian military planners recognized they could not keep pace. NATO airpower and the reach of the alliance into all sorts of regions and conflict zones posed a significant challenge for the Russian military and its intelligence services. One of the lessons they understood was that massed tank formations alone would not win wars in the 21st century. Throughout the 1990s and into the early 2000s, several important writings were produced by prominent Russian general staff figures, such as Generals Slipchenko and Gareev, as well as the future Chief of Staff of the Russian military and currently the commander of the Russian forces in the Ukraine war, Valeriy Gerasimov.
Slipchenko is credited in Russia with coining the phrase “sixth generation warfare” more than twenty years ago. According to Slipchenko, this new form of warfare signified a shift from nuclear-based conflict (which he called “fifth generation”) toward information-enabled, precision-strike, so-called non-contact wars (he authored a book with that same title). These wars would be fought at a distance, relying on airpower, command, control, intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance (C4ISR), and long-range precision strikes, rather than large ground forces. He and Gareev published a book in Russia in 2004 titled On Future Wars, which became influential in many Russian military circles. In this work, Slipchenko and Gareev emphasized the importance of studying non-contact warfare and firmly stated that Russia must adapt to it, or else “Russia would not survive.”
During that same period, Russia’s Air Force struggled significantly in the 1990s and 2000s to adopt precision-guided munitions (PGMs). Russia never fully integrated them or appropriately trained them on their use, which was evident in its prolonged conflicts with Chechen separatists. Most ground-attack operations during that period, from the mid to late 1990s, relied on “dumb bombs” and massed artillery on the battlefield. This resulted in the Russian air force’s poor performance in the 2008 Georgian conflict, when an outmanned Georgian military embarrassingly shot down several Russian fighter-bombers.
In the summer of 2008, responding to Georgia launching an incursion to retake South Ossetia, Russia responded with overwhelming force, sending an entire army to occupy swaths of Abkhazia, Ossetia, and also northern Georgia from Poti to Gori and the edges of Tbilisi. But while their force ratios led to quick success on the ground, the Russian air force did not perform as well in the air. In addition to air losses to ground-based air defense and friendly fire, Russian precision strikes did not go off as planned. Russia’s performance could be summed up as ineffective from the air. They were not able to project over-the-horizon warfare in the ways that Russian military planners had envisioned for non-contact war.
The first widespread and successful use of Russian PGMs would come still later, mostly during Russia’s involvement in Syria, where Russian squadrons were rotated for training and gained exposure to actual combat. Before that, many pilots had not experienced any combat outside of Chechnya.
Russia’s Air Force underwent a series of reforms due to these failures. It was reorganized and renamed the Russian Aerospace Forces (the VKS) in 2015 as a result of many of these reforms, or what were claimed to be reforms. When the full-scale invasion happened in 2022, Russia’s VKS, like much of its military, was still trying to evolve from its targeted reforms and these earlier developmental challenges. They attempted a limited shock-and-awe offensive but failed miserably in areas such as battle damage assessment and other key aspects of a true air campaign (the second article in this series will touch on these issues in more detail).
However, military reforms and adaptations in the Russian Air Force were not meant to stand alone. Russian kinetic actions were intended to be supported by other elements in non-contact warfare, aimed at softening the battlefield and undermining an adversary’s ability to fight. Prominent among these were active measures focused on information operations.
Active Measures, Measures of Support, and Non-state Actors
Returning to Russian arms doctrine, Slipchenko and other figures on the General Staff argued that, in the post–Cold War world, especially after observing the 1991 Gulf War and the dominance of US airpower, massing military forces was no longer effective. The world saw how Saddam’s large army, with thousands of tanks and armored vehicles, was destroyed from the air. Slipchenko claimed that future wars will focus on disrupting enemy systems, including military, economic, social, and other so-called “information means.”
This was not a new concept for Russia and its intelligence agencies—the FSB, GRU, and SVR (collectively the Russian intelligence services or RIS). The RIS would play a key role by using a well-known Russian technique—active measures, or as the RIS calls them today, measures of support. These tactics aim to weaken the enemy's ability to fight through malign influence, political interference, and disinformation. The Russians use state agencies and means, like their intelligence services, but also so-called non-state actors, like organized crime, private mercenaries, hacker groups, and many others, to carry out these and other hybrid actions as proxies.
The doctrinal approach of gray war, or new generation warfare, was gaining attention in Russia just as Putin's reign started. His rule coincided with the growing influence of the RIS within the government. It was natural for the RIS to take on roles the military was not equipped to perform, and Putin was quick to authorize them. One of the first tests for their active measures and gray war was Russia’s brief war with Georgia in 2008. As noted above, and while their military’s performance was mixed, their intelligence services were very active in the information arena. Russia flooded international media with its version of events. Their still-growing “RTV” news network promoted stories of atrocities they claimed were committed by the Georgian military. Europe and the U.S. were caught off guard and unprepared by the conflict; there was little to no meaningful response to Russia’s military actions, and no high costs or reprisals. It was a lesson Russia would remember.
After Georgia in 2008, while reforms were introduced in the air force in particular, the doctrinal debates continued. Building on Slipchenko’s ideas, writers from the General Staff, such as General Chekinov and General Bogdanov, further developed the doctrine they called “new-generation warfare.” Their work emphasized scripted roles in conflict for the information-psychological struggle, subversion, and cyber operations, while traditional large-scale combat operations became, by comparison, less prominent.
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Gerasimov’s speech and article focused on shifting Russia's attention to countering the so-called “color revolutions” that occurred in the first decade of this century in Ukraine, Georgia, and Kyrgyzstan. They were, and still are, viewed as a direct threat to Russia’s national security and to Putin’s dictatorship. Russia cannot tolerate functioning democracies and freedom on its borders.
By combining Gerasimov’s contributions with those of Slipchenko, Gareev, and others, the Russian military developed a concept of non-contact warfare that planned for long-range strikes executed after weakening the enemy through non-kinetic means. They de-emphasized large ground formations because, according to the theory, they should not be necessary. Russian measures of support are designed to weaken an adversary through disinformation, misinformation, malign influence on politics, and other methods. This would become the battle plan the Russians would attempt to implement in Ukraine in 2014 (and again, with adjustments, in 2022).
As cyber has taken a greater role in society and the mass media, the Russian grey zone approach has also increasingly included RIS cyber operations and online media manipulation to support “reflexive control,” an old Russian intelligence concept from the 1960s. The term reflects the notion of influencing an adversary to act in a desired way without the enemy’s awareness. Gerasimov and the military, along with leaders of the RIS, knew from Russia’s poor performance in Georgia that they were not ready for war with NATO or any strong peer-level adversary. They needed help to weaken any adversary with a capable armed force before actual war.
Syria and Ukraine would be the new testing grounds for this concept in practice, with a heavy reliance on the intelligence services to help prepare the battlefield before and through the military’s engagement. Their perceived successes in both theaters would, over time, convince the Russian intelligence services, its military, and most importantly, President Putin that Russia was ready for a much larger task— an attack on and seizure of the entire territory of Ukraine.
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Russia is preparing a landmark legal transformation that would expand who are qualified to buy and own cryptocurrencies in the country. Reports have disclosed that lawmakers in the State Duma are in the final phase of text meant to lower barriers for ordinary Russians, even as they keep safeguards and restrictions in place.
The draft bill has drawn attention because it marks a shift from years of strict limits. According to TASS, the proposal would take cryptocurrencies out of a special financial regulation regime so they become a more common part of financial life for people across Russia. Lawmakers say this could make buying and holding crypto something regular citizens do, instead of a privilege for a few.
“A bill has already been prepared that removes cryptocurrencies from special financial regulation, which means, they will be a common occurrence in our lives,” Anatoly Aksakov, chair of the State Duma’s Financial Market Committee, said.
Expanded Access With Caps
Under the current text, people who are not considered “qualified investors” would be able to buy digital coins up to a certain limit. The figure mentioned is 300,000 rubles per year, which is roughly $3,800. This cap aims to let more Russians participate in crypto while trying to prevent big losses if prices swing wildly.
Ordinary buyers would still face conditions. Reports say they will have to meet some basic criteria or checks before gaining access, such as passing a short risk‑awareness step and trading only through licensed brokers or exchanges. This is meant to keep unregulated peer‑to‑peer trading from dominating.
Professional or qualified market players would face fewer limits. They could trade and hold a wider range of cryptocurrencies with no annual restrictions, though they may still have to demonstrate understanding of risks.
Legislative Push And Timing
Lawmakers have said the draft is ready and will be discussed during Russia’s spring parliamentary session. If the State Duma passes the bill, implementation could start later in 2026. Aksakov told state media that this move could make crypto “a normal part of life” for many Russians.
At the same time, Russian regulators continue to work on other crypto rules. The Bank of Russia has said it plans to set out penalties for illegal crypto intermediaries starting in 2027 and is pushing for a wider regulatory framework that covers both qualified and ordinary investors.
Balancing Risk And Use
Russia still bans using cryptocurrencies to pay for goods and services within the country, a rule in place since 2021. Officials say the new bill would not change that. Instead, the focus is on investment and holding, not daily spending.
Featured image from Unsplash, chart from TradingView
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