Russia is expanding its hybrid warfare campaign across Europe as the war in Ukraine approaches its fifth winter. European capitals face rising sabotage, cyberattacks, and mysterious fires, leaving defense institutions struggling to move beyond a reactive posture against escalating sub-threshold provocations from Moscow.
As the conflict in Ukraine enters its fifth winter, Russia is expanding its campaign of hybrid attacks against European nations supplying weapons and financial backing to Kyiv. From cyber operations and mysterious cases of arson to armed drones, tensions are surging across the continent while institutions in Brussels and national capitals search for an effective deterrent strategy.
Explosive Drones and Sabotage Across Germany and the Baltic Region
Recent incidents have heightened anxiety over infrastructure vulnerability in Europe’s largest economies. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said on Aug 25 that those responsible for hybrid attacks will pay the price
following the discovery of an explosive-laden drone at an airport in Leipzig near a Ukrainian cargo plane, which sparked speculation that Moscow was involved in an attempted strike.
Lithuanian Prosecutor-General Nida Grunskiene said last week that the drone attack in Germany has “links” to an ongoing investigation into an attempt to detonate a parcel on a DHL cargo plane in 2024. Lithuania has charged five in the attempted sabotage, allegedly hired by Russia’s military intelligence. While Germany has not singled out Russia as being behind the armed drone or the recent discovery of a cache of weapons on the outskirts of Berlin, a slew of investigative media reports have pointed the finger at Moscow.
Across the continent, security agencies report similar covert operations. Poland said in August that it thwarted an attempted assassination of a US citizen originally from Ukraine that was ordered by Russia, while Estonia accused Moscow of being behind a fire at a drone maker. In the United Kingdom, two Ukrainian nationals were handed prison sentences in Britain in June after a jury found them guilty of conspiring to commit arson attacks on a car and property linked to then Prime Minister Keir Starmer. The prosecution said during the trial that one of the perpetrators was recruited online by a Russian-speaking Telegram user. Moscow has increasingly relied on recruitment via social media to carry out arson or other sabotage attacks after large-scale expulsions of its diplomats following the invasion of Ukraine.
Intelligence Warnings and the Challenge of Asymmetric Warfare
European intelligence services warn that the covert campaign is widening. Lithuanian Defence Minister Robertas Kaunas said Moscow is weighing a potential false flag operation using captured Ukrainian drones to strike critical infrastructure in the Baltic region. There are indications that Russian intelligence and security services are looking at hybrid warfare operations against the Baltic states and Poland, an intelligence official told Bloomberg earlier in August.
Alex Kokcharov, geoeconomics analyst at Bloomberg Economics in London, described the strategy: Russia’s ongoing hybrid warfare in Europe is a highly coordinated, sub-threshold campaign aimed at destabilising Western political systems, fracturing NATO and EU unity, and eroding support for Ukraine. To achieve these goals, the Kremlin maintains plausible deniability by exploiting anonymity and utilising proxies to obfuscate direct state attribution.
Analysts emphasize that European officials have been anticipating for months that Russia may escalate its aggressive campaign against the continent. But the bloc has yet to change its fundamentally defensive posture, according to people familiar with how the institutions gauge outside threats, who spoke on condition of anonymity. That has likely encouraged Moscow to probe how far it can go in trying to intimidate and wear down Western allies as it remains locked in a war of attrition with Ukraine. Agnia Grigas, a non-resident fellow at the Atlantic Council in Vilnius, noted: NATO, European and national responses have largely been reactive and defensive. They have focused on detecting and countering individual provocations, but have not built a record of effective deterrence by consistently dissuading Moscow from continuing or escalating them.
Strategic Implications and Responses
That lack of preparedness comes as Europe has taken on the primary role in supporting Ukraine, with the US shifting away from the continent. While NATO’s mutual defence clause commits member states to help one another in case of an attack, Russia’s alleged actions have so far fallen short of what would become a trigger for such a response.
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