Russia’s Attacks on Europe Are Getting More Brazen and More Dangerous
Over the course of the summer, Russian attacks have been pushing ever deeper into European territory.
On Aug. 11, military divers destroyed two drones floating off the coast of Romania near a €4 billion ($4.7 billion) energy project. Nine days later, Bucharest scrambled two F-16s to take out a maritime drone near the same Black Sea gas platform with hundreds of workers on board. Earlier that month, German police detected an armed UAV at Leipzig airport, while this week NATO jets downed another unmanned aircraft that entered Lithuanian airspace from neighboring Belarus, an ally of Moscow.
In all these cases, the authorities pointed the finger squarely at the Kremlin.
As Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine grinds on with little movement on the battlefield and thousands of casualties each week, so-called hybrid attacks on Europe are increasing not just in number, but in their recklessness. Companies on the frontline find themselves caught in a gray zone between war and peace and European officials, who asked not to be named discussing sensitive issues, fear that it’s only a matter of time until there are civilian casualties.
“It’s clear that the European defense industry is working in a different security environment than a few years ago,” said Kuldar Väärsi, CEO of Estonian defense firm Milrem Robotics, which was targeted by a suspected arson attack in August. “As a company whose systems are used by several NATO member states and other ally and partner nations, including Ukraine, we need to take the resultant risks into account.”
Read more: Europe Struggles to Counter Russian Attacks Falling Short of War
Just this week, the US Justice Department accused the Russian intelligence service of “conspiring to finance terrorism and commit murder for hire” in Europe at the behest of the Kremlin. Defense plants, public utilities, transport systems and communications networks have all been attacked, presenting Europe’s leaders with their greatest security threat in decades.
So far, it’s unclear if they’re up to the challenge.
“We struggle to counter so-called hybrid attacks with open societies that make it easy for the attacker,” said James Everard, former NATO Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe. “This is war without battle, and behind their nuclear shield Russia believes it can act with impunity, acting directly or through proxies.”
The breadth and frequency of these incidents would have been unthinkable a few years ago in a continent that long considered itself shielded by NATO’s mutual-defense pact. But with President Donald Trump casting doubt on US commitment to the military alliance and Russia intensifying its war on Ukraine as winter approaches, confidence in Europe’s security now looks far less assured.
Germany is the “daily target of hybrid warfare” by Russia, Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt said Sept. 1. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said those accusations were “completely unfounded.”
The past two months have seen a shift in Russia’s focus toward defense-industrial and logistics targets directly connected to support for Ukraine, according to one NATO country official, who added that this more aggressive campaign presents higher risks. With Moscow continuing to structure operations so that it can deny direct responsibility, the campaign is more significant strategically than for the physical damage caused so far, the official said.
That assessment could change as Russia ups the ante with incidents such as last weekend’s drone assault at a train station near the Ukraine-Polish border as European and US dignitaries were passing through. Such attacks had been largely taboo until now, offering further evidence of a growing brazenness and willingness to risk foreign victims.
Where once Russia stood accused of election interference and weaponizing migration, it’s now suspected of sabotage, arson, tampering with critical infrastructure, cyberattacks and airspace violations, including an incident last week that resulted in two civilian deaths at a border post between Ukraine and fellow EU aspirant Moldova. The EU’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, says Europe is experiencing “a wave of increasingly kinetic hybrid attacks.”
The difficulty in responding to hybrid attacks has at times led to a reluctance to blame Russia openly, both to avert escalation and avoid revealing intelligence methods, officials say. Many incidents, especially cyberattacks and hacks targeting critical infrastructure, are barely reported if at all, meaning the scale of the problem is far wider than is made public.
Many arms makers in Germany are targeted by regular cyberattacks, according to a person familiar with the matter. In 2024, arsonists set fire to the home of Armin Papperger, the chief executive officer of defense giant Rheinmetall AG, and western intelligence agencies warned that Russia was plotting to kill him. He now travels with a heavy security detail and Rheinmetall has increased its overall security measures.
German radar and sensor maker Hensoldt AG is increasing drone and perimeter surveillance at its plants and wants to build the infrastructure required to down drones itself, CEO Oliver Dorre said in an interview. It needs approval from the federal police to do this, and Dorre said guidelines are needed sooner rather than later, before the situation becomes worse.
Poland, as a key conduit for aid to Ukraine, has suffered a spate of suspicious incidents, with multiple cyberattacks on public utilities like water, energy infrastructure and hospitals, and damage to the rail line between Warsaw and the Ukrainian border attributed to Russian intelligence. Prime Minister Donald Tusk described a fire at a plant for one of Europe’s largest drone makers, WB Electronics, in August as an “act of sabotage,” though no public link was made to Russia.
Poland announced this month it’s expanding protection of its airspace and strengthening rapid-response defenses, citing the threat from “Russian provocations.”
Europe’s largest weapons makers are mostly undeterred by the increasing level of Russian activity aimed at their facilities and personnel, according to a person at one such company. Security has been tightened, and lingering “muscle memory” from the Cold War is feeding a vigilance that borders on paranoia, the person said.
Other key businesses are less well able to defend themselves. Achieving 100% protection of electricity networks is impossible, “especially when you may not even know what you are facing,” said Juha Räsänen, CEO of Savon Voima, an energy company in eastern Finland.
“Physical security, physical monitoring, cameras and different types of detection methods are being increased all the time,” he said. “But the most important thing is that people learn to tolerate power outages.”
That kind of resilience points to another reality: Russia’s campaign has so far failed to substantially reduce European support for Ukraine. The rise in high-profile incidents has instead reinforced arguments for more European defense spending, tighter counterintelligence coordination and new sanctions.
As one official put it, the Kremlin’s campaign may be disruptive but is proving counterproductive for Moscow.
Germany, for example, made it known after Leipzig that a delivery of additional Iris-T air-defense missiles to Ukraine is planned for September, and that Berlin will also soon provide Kyiv with several thousand strike drones.
As hybrid actions move deeper into Europe, the lid is occasionally peeled back to reveal what authorities are confronting. In early September, a British man was arrested and charged under the National Security Act with giving details about drone manufacturing sites in England to a Russian intelligence unit and preparing to commit sabotage. His lawyers said his allegiance lies with the UK.
That comes on the back of suspected arson attacks on former British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s home, Russian submarine activity around critical infrastructure in the British Isles, and drones launched from shadow fleet vessels in UK and Irish waters, including during Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s visit to Ireland this year.
Governments from London to Warsaw are scrambling to ratchet up their individual and collective responses before more serious damage spirals into open conflict with Russia. NATO is strengthening deterrence in the nations affected, officials say, but a coordinated strategy continues to elude member states.
The understanding among security officials is that Putin is testing how far he can push NATO members to expose indecision among the allies while staying below the threshold that would trigger retaliation under the Article 5 collective-defense clause. Yet that probing raises the chances of miscalculation and accidents.
“Russia is consistent in identifying weaknesses in NATO’s infrastructure and is willing to attempt multiple tactics and targets in a flexible and increasingly risk-taking manner,” said Emily Ferris, associate fellow at the London-based Royal United Services Institute.
Ferris published a report in March on sabotage attacks attributed to Russia in NATO countries and found the alliance “unprepared.” Six months later, her verdict hasn’t changed.
“In the absence of clear red lines from NATO about the consequences of attacks like this, Russia is expanding to fill the space of the uncertainty,” she said.
The only time that Article 5 was invoked was by the US after the Sept. 11 attacks of 2001. Western intelligence agencies are now applying counter-terrorism methodology developed since then and the fight against al-Qaeda and Islamic State to Russian hybrid warfare, according to two officials.
Russia and terror groups both use proxies, often recruited online. Hence for western agencies, there are similarities in identifying threat actors. The difference is that those recruited to Moscow’s service are not ideological, but paid.
Western security officials say that Moscow is acting out of desperation after Ukraine’s drone attacks targeting energy infrastructure and logistics warehouses damaged the Russian economy.
The view from Moscow is that the more painfully Ukraine hits Russia, the stronger will be the voices who want to make Europe pay. A person close to the Kremlin put it more bluntly, saying that Russia will make life hell for Europe through asymmetrical hybrid operations over its support for Kyiv.
To those on the front line like the Baltic states, Russia has long since crossed any notional boundaries.
“This is not hybrid, this is about explosives that can cause damage. There can be casualties. People may die,” said Lithuanian Foreign Minister Kestutis Budrys. “If we won’t stop this, it will escalate.”
Photograph: Police cars near the railway damaged in an explosion in Mika, Poland on Nov. 17, 2025; photo credit: Wojtek Radwanski/AFP/Getty Images
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