Dissecting Putin’s Tactics: The Use of Unsuspecting Suicide Bombers

Unable to score a victory in their three-year war to overtake Ukraine, the Russians are getting desperate. The latest move is to “recruit” volunteers who end up being unwilling suicide bombers.

Using this scheme, a single unidentified (and expendable) courier plants a weapon deep in enemy territory. The new wrinkle is that these missions are so secret that the couriers do not know the contents of their packages or their consequences. If the mission succeeds, the unsuspecting bomber becomes one of the victims.

A Reluctant Accomplice

A recent article in The Guardian featured one such would-be suicide bomber. He is identified only as “Oleh,” a nineteen-year-old from Rivne, in eastern Ukraine. He contacted his Russian “curator,” Alexander, through the social media site, Telegram. Alexander offered easy money to those willing to take some risks. The first job was relatively simple: photograph the courthouse, conscription office and police station in his hometown. The job was quick, easy and lucrative. Once Oleh sent the photos to Alexander, $50.00 US appeared in a cryptocurrency account Oleh had opened earlier.

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Unwittingly, Oleh’s thirst for easy money made him a Russian agent. Next, there was a more difficult task, which paid somewhat more. Had Oleh refused it, Alexander would have threatened to expose him to Ukraine’s security agency, the SBU. Indeed, the SBU claims to have arrested over seven hundred such agents.

In February, Oleh received the assignment for which his handlers had groomed him. Alexander instructed him to pick up a rucksack and a plastic bag secreted in a local parking garage. Alexander told Oleh that the parcels contained paint canisters. Once planted, the canisters would explode and shake the confidence of local authorities. Supposedly, they are designed to be non-lethal. The presence of the paint-splattered interior is a sign that the location is vulnerable.

Oleh was to place the bag in a nearby police station while a friend kept watch to ensure that no one had followed them. The pay-off was to be $1000.00 when he successfully planted the two parcels.

Disaster Averted

The Russians had no intention of making good on their promise. The parcels did not contain paint, but rather, high explosives. An agent, notified by a remote location device, planned to use a cellphone to detonate both when Oleh entered the station. Of course, the explosion would kill Oleh and anyone near him. The explosion itself would be a sign of the Russians’ ability to plant explosives almost anywhere in Ukraine, even a location crawling with police.

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However, Oleh grew suspicious and opened the parcels. Realizing his danger, he ran to the nearest police officer. At that point, the SBU agents who had been following Oleh and his accomplice arrested both men. The SBU placed the explosives in a bag designed to prevent their detonation by a cellphone. Later, authorities exploded them harmlessly.

Alexander, his real identity unknown, escaped.

Defining Cognitive Warfare

This incident is part of a much larger picture. In the absence of concrete military victories that the Russian armies have been unable to produce, Putin—a former KGB officer—is turning to other tactics, a process called Cognitive Warfare. It is also known as Psychological Warfare, or simply Psywar.

A report from the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), titled “A Primer on Russian Cognitive Warfare,” details this strategy.

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“The Russian way of war is centered on the notion that wars can be won and lost in the opponent’s mind. The Kremlin’s main effort is shaping its opponents’ decisions to achieve aims unattainable through Russia’s physical capabilities alone.”

These efforts go back decades, perhaps even to 1917, when a small band of Bolsheviks under the leadership of Vladimir Lenin convinced a nation to fall before the illusion of his power.

“Russia is recycling Soviet messaging strategies and implements. Russia flaunting its conventional power, such as nuclear weapons, its fleet, and its missile systems, is a tactic that the Soviets frequently used in their strategic messaging against the West.”

Diverting Resources and Attention

However, not all cognitive warfare techniques convey overwhelming strength. They may create the perception that an opponent can strike almost anywhere without notice.

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Under such a strategy, even a failed attack can gain a strategic advantage. For instance, it may comfort the people of Ukraine that Oleh was caught and is cooling his heels in jail. On the other hand, they have to realize, even if that realization is subconscious, that Oleh could have succeeded.

After all, until Oleh turned himself in, he was just another nineteen-year-old carrying a backpack. If the local authorities have to take on the responsibility of searching every teenager carrying a satchel, that task alone siphons off the attention of many police officers. Additionally, the threat is not limited to teenage males. After three years of war, many forty-year-old Ukrainian women, for example, may also need money just as much as Oleh did.

In the West, some journalists and pundits use their broadcasts, articles and podcasts to promote the Russian version of events in Ukraine. Of course, they are uninterested in horrific tactics like employing unwilling suicide bombers. Such cases should be a wake-up call that exposes a barbaric and unscrupulous agenda that might later be turned on the West.

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