Russian hybrid attacks risk catching Europe flat-footed

As Russia’s full-scale invasion attempt against neighboring Ukraine nears its fifth year of region-disrupting violence, a new wave of intelligence reports has raised a frightening prospect: a widening theater of violence, in which Russian hybrid warfare strikes deep European Union territory. With alarm bells ringing over potential Russian offensives — both digital and kinetic — in the coming months, vulnerable European nations must figure out if, and how, to respond.

‘Undermining’ NATO

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte has framed the “rising number” of hybrid incidents in NATO countries as a sign that Russia is “losing the war in Ukraine,” said The Associated Press. But recent incidents, including an “explosive-laden drone at a German airport” and a “strike on a passenger train near the Polish border,” have presaged a “rush of warnings about more chaos to come” across Europe, said The New York Times. “The question is how Europe responds.”

Unlike the “classic thing you think of with NATO” warfare, in which one country’s army “attacks, tries to invade” and “tries to take things,” Russia’s hybrid model is “aimed at undermining our NATO allies without a full-scale invasion,” said Kurt Volker, a former U.S. ambassador to NATO, on NPR’s “All Things Considered.” The goal is to “sow doubt” and “cause NATO countries to back off of support for Ukraine” for fear “there might be a bigger escalation with Russia that we don’t want.”

‘Hardened’ Western rhetoric

Russia’s “shadow war” with Europe “grows bolder by the day,” said the Kyiv Independent. “No one can say how far the Kremlin is ready to go.” Although “rhetoric in Western capitals has hardened,” material responses so far have “ranged from symbolic ones” targeting Russian “cultural and diplomatic centers” to “fresh sanctions and arms packages for Ukraine,” which Moscow has already “weathered for years.”

Europeans should guard against “overreacting to any sort of hybrid activity,” said current U.S. Ambassador to NATO Matthew Whitaker at a recent event in Iowa, per the AP. Russian hybrid attacks aren’t “at a volume that would mean that it’s the beginning” of broader violence. “We haven’t reached that threshold.”