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..
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