A Ukrainian soldier in the Kharkiv region of Ukraine, on July 14, 2024. Europe's potential responses to Russia's tactics could include retaliatory hybrid warfare, more military support for Ukraine and further economic penalties against Moscow. Photo / David Guttenfelder, The New York Times
The swarm of Russian drones that flew into Poland last week sparked outrage across Europe and dire warnings about violating Nato airspace — but no overt retaliation from a military alliance trying to avoid conflict with a nuclear-armed neighbour.
European officials blamed Moscow when the navigation system faltered this month on a plane carrying the president of the European Union’s executive branch. Officials say the plane was swept up in an intensifying Russian jamming operation, but in that case, too, they took no overt action.
Both incidents could have had deadly consequences, but instead, they fell short of anything that would provoke a forceful response.
Such provocations are a hallmark of so-called hybrid or grey-zone warfare, which seeks to antagonise and destabilise countries through a combination of covert military, economic and disinformation-related measures, without overt attacks.
The episodes fuelled a continuing debate among European diplomats and military officials over whether Nato or the EU should impose stiffer penalties in response to ensure that Russia does not continue undaunted, but without risking outright armed conflict.
Russian sabotage operations in Europe more than tripled from 2023 to 2024, as the West supported Ukraine in fighting the Russian invasion, a recent report found.
Over the past year alone, officials say, Russia and other adversaries have disrupted Western energy systems, meddled in national elections, plotted to put incendiary devices on cargo planes, and hacked into health service networks and legal records in shadowy strikes designed to conceal the culprit.
One concern for officials is that Russia is ramping up disruptions to make them seem normal — until they tip over into acts of war.
Some current and former officials contend that shadowy actions attributed to Russia already amount to war.
“Russia has been conducting an undeclared and hybrid war against the West for a very long time,” the Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavsky told a European security conference hosted by the International Institute of Strategic Studies this month in Prague.
“They regard themselves at war with us.”
Russia has generally deflected the charges, counter-accusing European leaders of reflexively blaming Moscow for any problem.
Russia’s aggression has left some to openly express worry that it will take a major event to mobilise Nato into action.
“The failure to prioritise and plan for how to counter Russia’s hybrid war on the United States and our allies is a massive strategic mistake,” said Michael Carpenter, the former US ambassador to the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe.
Attitudes towards hybrid attacks are “similar, in some ways, to America’s complacency about the impact of terrorism before 9/11,” Carpenter said.
The September 11 attacks were the only time that Nato has invoked Article 5, which holds that an attack on one ally is considered an attack on all.
Some Europeans are pushing to invoke it in response to hybrid strikes — a powerful statement, though what action would result from that, if any, is unclear.
Other potential responses could include retaliatory hybrid warfare, more military support for Ukraine and further economic penalties against Russia.
Officials identified the drones that flew into Poland this past week as cheap, plywood-and-Styrofoam models that are typically used as decoys to overwhelm Ukraine’s air defences, allowing the more sophisticated explosive drones to penetrate.
They did not kill anyone, but they disrupted commercial flights and stoked anxiety across Eastern Europe, where Russia has long been seen as a more immediate threat than in the West.
In its immediate response, Nato invoked Article 4, which enabled members to start urgent discussions within the alliance. Militaries also stepped-up air patrols across the region.
Polish and Nato officials said that one reason they believed the incursion to be intentional was that it involved too many drones — at least 19, they said — to be an accident.
The incident again showed what is widely known as Nato’s “capability gap” against Russia — having too few air defences, which are costly to use, against a barrage of cheap but potentially deadly drones.
Asked this month about whether hybrid attacks could prompt an Article 5 response, which likely would involve military force, Mark Rutte, Nato’s secretary-general, said that it was always possible and that Nato would respond powerfully.
“Our reaction will be devastating,” Rutte said, though he would not discuss what it would take to trigger Article 5. “When it comes to hybrid, we are not naive.”
Some governments are already retaliating against grey-zone strikes in secret, particularly the countries closer to Russia that are under constant hybrid attack.
“We’re taking important measures in order to enhance our resilience,” Swedish Defence Minister Pal Jonson said in an interview.
“And of course, we are also making sure to make things difficult for Russia, predominantly by supporting Ukraine as well.
“Sweden is neither at war nor at peace,” Jonson added. “Because Russia is operating in the grey zone between cold peace and the Cold War.”
Nato’s top two leaders announced a military campaign to step up defences and aggressively counter Russian attempts to destabilise the alliance’s eastern flank.
Hybrid activity there has included frequent jamming of radio frequencies, which has been roundly condemned but not contained, since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Russian jamming disrupted the navigation system on a plane this month carrying European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and delaying its landing in Bulgaria, according to a statement provided by EU officials and attributed to Prime Minister Rossen Jeliazkov of Bulgaria.
The statement also quoted Jeliazkov saying that Russian jamming efforts have stretched from Finland to as far south as Libya, in North Africa.
The EU is preparing another round of economic sanctions against Russia — its 19th — to further curb its oil trade, and von der Leyen has been considering how to hasten European independence from Russian energy.
She has also been at the fore of efforts to siphon the interest from about US$224 billion in frozen Russian assets being held in the bloc to help fund Ukraine.
Those who have been pushing to punish Russia for its hybrid attacks have suggested seizing the frozen assets outright, to give to Ukraine’s Government and military.
That would amount to a clear retaliation without using military force that could escalate into a broader war.
Experts have said seizing Russian state assets carries legal and financial risks. An analysis in June by the International Crisis Group noted that confiscating the assets could rattle European bond markets and weaken the euro’s status as a reserve currency.
Von der Leyen said this past week that she does not support seizing the assets outright.
Hours after the Russian drone incursion in Poland, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine said he advised her to find additional ways to use the assets to help Ukraine.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Written by: Lara Jakes
Photographs by: David Guttenfelder, Ruth Fremson
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