Russia to keep up cyberattacks, disinfo says secret service

(ANSA) - ROME, FEB 28 - Russia will continue cyber-attacks and disinformation campaigns against NATO members, Italy's intelligence services said in their annual report to parliament on Tuesday.
    "Moscow will not stop interfering in the political dynamics and decision-making processes of NATO countries, resorting even more than in the past to coercive and manipulative methods such as cyber attacks, disinformation, blackmail and the use of levers such as migratory and energetic ones, the latter destined to lose relevance with the western commitment to find alternatives to energy dependence on Russia," said the report.
    Russia is also gearing fro a long-term war in Ukraine, the intelligence services reported.
    "For the Russians, an operational pause is essential to regenerate and prepare for a long-term war. Moscow seeks to take advantage of this period of relative lull to restart the activities of the Russian military-production complex, which, while remaining significant in terms of production capacity, is beginning to feel the impact of Western sanctions," the report said.
    The year, it adds, "also closed with President Putin's acknowledgement of the difficulties encountered in the Donbass in opposing the Ukrainian Forces, a signal which, linked to the proposed restructuring of the Russian Armed Forces - with an increase in the total number of soldiers up to 1.5 million - confirms the intention to continue the conflict until the pivotal objectives sought by Moscow are achieved".
    In other points, the secret service said that it would be hard to address the problem of a rising migrant wave from Turkey that on Sunday saw a shipwreck in which over 100 migrants are feared dead, and that NGO-run rescue ships are a pull factor for migrant smugglers.
    "There is an increase in migratory flows from the eastern Mediterranean, leaving mainly from Turkey towards the coasts of Calabria, Puglia and Sicily by mainly Kurdish and Pakistani migrants, marking a rise in trafficking as well as the use, which has become practice, of the web and social networks by the same (trafficking) groups to advertise their trips and related services", the report said.
    There is an increase in sea rescue carried out by NGO ships, mainly in the Libyan Search and Rescue (SAR) area, the report added.
    These activities "are often publicised on social networks by facilitators of irregular migration as a guarantee of a safer journey to Europe".
    In this context, the presence of humanitarian ships represents "a logistical advantage for the criminal organisations that manage migrant trafficking, allowing them to adapt their modus operandi according to the possibility of reducing the quality of the vessels used, correspondingly increasing the illicit profits, but exposing the people on board to a more concrete risk of shipwreck", said the report.. (ANSA).