Speaking at a press conference Friday morning and which unveiled the 2023-2024 ISS Yearbook, Palloson said that Russia's activities include the recruitment of ordinary people, while he also identified a shift of propaganda to social media.

With Russia's war of aggression in Ukraine entering its third year, there might be a misconception that this continues to occupy the bulk of its attention and resources.

However, this is not the case, Palloson said.

Western sanctions have rendered the tools available to Russian intelligence services' influence operations more restricted in scope, which in turn has led to these organizations seeking new outlets.

This has also led to a more direct and harsher approach than before.

Palloson said: "The most significant change in the security threat picture over the past year is the shift in Russian influence activities towards more physical and brutal tactics, something which we also refer to as 'state vandalism'."

"Over the past year, Russia has intensified hybrid operations against Estonia and several other European countries, attempting to use all non-military means as weapons against us," the ISS chief continued.

"Russia has consistently been using hostile propaganda, cyberattacks, it has vandalized Estonian memorials, orchestrated bomb threat campaigns, attempted migration attacks, and tried to influence parliamentary elections. Notably, at the order of their intelligence services, an act of vandalism was carried out on a vehicle belonging to the Minister of the Interior, Lauri Läänemets," Palloson noted.

Palloson noted that ISS, in tandem with its partner agencies, was able to prevent most other Russian hybrid operation threats from materializing. "Russia had actually planned additional attacks on Estonia, which, if realized, would have brought a much larger impact."

This included concrete action against individuals engaging in such activity.

"To date, we have detained 143 individuals who will be prosecuted," Palloson said.

"It is often the case that these attacks involve people recruited via social media, typically those with criminal backgrounds who may be facing economic hardship, and for whom the money they could potentially earn trumps any ideological considerations," he continued.

A bomb threat campaign directed by Russian special services last October saw hundreds of Estonian schools, government offices, local governments, and businesses receiving bomb threats via email.

The emails were found to have been sent from Russian territory by Kremlin-aligned activists.

They did not present any direct danger, as no explosive devices or similar had been put in place or detonated in the affected locations, Palloson added.

The rest of Friday's press conference covered Russian propaganda and recruiting methods in more detail, as set out in the yearbook.

The 2023-2024 ISS Yearbook is available in English here.

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