Europe’s Leaders Gather After Weeks of Bomb Threats, Cyberattacks - Newsweek

Dozens of European leaders will gather in Ireland on Thursday, in the wake of a spate of incidents widely described as hybrid attacks on the continent designed to destabilize Western countries.

A total of 48 heads of state and government have received an invite to the European Political Community meeting, which is to discuss "securing and defending a democratic Europe." The EPC was established in 2022, mainly spurred on by France and Germany,. as a forum for countries both inside and outside the 27-nation EU following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine

On Friday, the European Council—the body steering the EU's direction—is to convene for a meeting that has been described as more "informal."

Likely to be high up on the agenda is the possibility of a peace deal for Ukraine after fresh U.S.-brokered negotiations kicked off in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) this week. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has arrived in Dublin on Wednesday. President Donald Trump's envoys, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, arrived in Moscow early on Thursday to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin.

But what U.S. and European officials paint as an escalating campaign of so-called hybrid attacks by Russia and Iran is also set to be front and center in talks.

Hybrid warfare is a broad term, largely referring to activities that stop short of open fighting, such as cyberattacks, information campaigns or targeting vulnerable infrastructure like power grids or undersea cables. They may take the form of espionage or sabotage operations.

Several European media outlets received hoax bomb threats on November 6, rounding off a week packed with bomb scares on dozens of flights crisscrossing Europe.

Meanwhile, at least six countries reported supermarket fridges and freezers being hacked earlier this month, and French officials said blood banks had been targeted by cyberattacks.

European nations, particularly those pressed up on Russia's border or Ukrainian soil, have been further set on edge by a series of drone and missile incursions into their airspace, which some officials say is an example of Moscow probing NATO reactions, trying to weaken the alliance and hack at support for Ukraine.

While it's notoriously difficult to apportion blame for hybrid warfare—sometimes referred to as gray-zone tactics—European authorities are growing bolder in publicly identifying the individuals, states and organizations they assess are responsible for hybrid attacks, including the Kremlin's suspected agents and alleged Iranian operatives. No state or organization has been formally accused of ordering the bomb hoaxes across Europe last week.

The EU is an economic and political bloc, rather than an organization dealing overtly with defense planning. This largely falls to NATO, which is a defensive and military alliance.

While the U.K. and U.S. aren't EU member states, many European countries are also part of NATO. The alliance's top commander in Europe, U.S. Air Force General Alexus Grynkewich, told European Parliament lawmakers in September that NATO was seeing a "quantitative and qualitative increase" in Russian hybrid activity.

"State-directed sabotage is growing increasingly brazen," he added. Denmark's military and foreign intelligence service said in a stark statement in late September that Moscow had upped its cyberattacks and sabotage operations in Europe, and described Russia as "more willing to take risks."

Moscow will try to further turn up the pressure of its hybrid war against NATO "with greater consequences for the targeted countries than in the past," Danish intelligence warned.

In September, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said hybrid threats like sabotage, arson, cyberattacks and drone incursions "are ramping up every day."

"As the threat level climbs, so must Europe's preparedness," she said.

Von der Leyen said the EU needed its own "counter-hybrid playbook," and agreement across member states on how to respond to gray zone attacks modeled on NATO's security guarantees.

NATO's Article 4 allows any alliance member to trigger discussions, particularly about their national security, among the North Atlantic Council, which is NATO's main decision-making body.

"I believe it is time for Europe's own Article 4," von der Leyen said. "This is why we will set out our ideas to make a European Security Council a reality."

The Dublin meetings may "help put flesh on the bone" of von der Leyen's plans, and could see the EU member states agree to new initiatives, said John Foreman, a former British defense attache to Moscow and Kyiv.

But European Union nations have long been hamstrung by their inability to work together as one, he told Newsweek.

"The lack of coordination between countries leaves seams and gaps which Russia exploits," he added.

A report published last month by security firm Osavul said NATO's eastern flank nations, such as Poland and the Baltic states, had 18 percent of the EU's population, but experienced 60 percent of all Russian-linked hybrid incidents.

Hybrid campaigns "tested in one member state get reused in the next," Osavul co-founder Dmytro Bilash told Newsweek. "The EU is well placed to connect those dots: it can track cross-border patterns and help member states share what they know about campaigns that are already running or about to start."

The EU needs to have a common strategy for predicting attacks, and publicly blaming the responsibly party, he added. The bloc should also funnel investment into intelligence and security capabilities of each member state, as well as cracking down on individuals who are paid to carry out hybrid attacks, Bilash said.

All 27 EU members are on the guest list for Thursday's summit, as well as Canada, Ukraine and the U.K. Temporary road restrictions will be in place and Northern Irish police are being deployed to support Irish authorities.

Ireland currently holds the rotating EU presidency. Irish leader Micheál Martin, the country's Taoiseach, said the summit would look at "economic, political and security challenges of shared concern."

France on Monday said Iran was responsible for a cyberattack on supermarket refrigerators in mid-October that sharply increased temperatures in the units. French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said the Iranian ambassador to the country had been summoned over the incident.

In September, Estonia blamed Russia for a fire at a facility used by a defense firm in the capital, Tallinn, to supply drones to Ukraine. Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna said the blaze was an "an act of sabotage ordered by the special services of the Russian Federation."

Less than a month earlier, the German government said Moscow was responsible for a drone attack on the east German airport of Leipzig.

On August 4, a drone laden with explosives was found at the airport, near to planes operated by Ukraine's Antonov Airlines. The airport is a major military aid hub and often used by NATO forces. Russia denied responsibility.

The Russian embassy previously told Newsweek that "technical failures, infrastructure faults and criminal incidents across Europe are routinely attributed to our country, without evidence and often before any investigation has been concluded."

The EU has said Ukraine and the ongoing peace negotiations will be discussed during the "informal" meeting on Friday.

Russian state media reported Witkoff and Kushner would meet with Putin at midday local time (4 a.m. ET). They will then travel to Dublin to meet Zelensky.

Ukraine, and many European officials, have looked on with concern at the rapprochement between the White House and the Kremlin, worried that Europe could be cut out of the crafting of a future Ukraine peace deal entirely and Kyiv forced to make concessions, including on territory.

Any impression of European unity was fractured last month when Finnish President Alexander Stubb and Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre said they had spoken with Putin, sparking backlash from several fellow European leaders.

But in an unusual public show of division among Nordic neighbors, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said she was "very skeptical" about the phone call with the Russian leader and suggested little could be achieved by direct contact with the Kremlin.

European leaders "cannot decide who has the authority to speak on behalf of Europe or to create adequate structures to feed into such an authority," said Christoph Meyer, professor of European and international politics at King's College London.

Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov said on Thursday the EU hadn't managed to choose a negotiator to engage with Russia, according to the Tass state news agency.

"The underlying issue is that Europe collectively is often risk averse—and individual European leaders are more comfortable with the risk arising from “continuing as before” rather than the risks that come from changing towards a more effective strategy," Meyer told Newsweek.