Russia’s grey-zone attacks on Europe are growing more brazen

RUSSIA’S CAMPAIGN of sabotage against Europe has escalated so drastically in recent months that on September 18th Emmanuel Macron, France’s president, summoned French party leaders and presidential candidates to the Elysée Palace to brief them on the threat of civilian casualties. “No one is safe,” Mr Macron told them, according to Le Monde, a daily. The Russians, he said, aim “to intimidate us and break our support for the Ukrainians”.

FILE PHOTO: A police officer in protective clothing works at Leipzig/Halle Airport in Schkeuditz, Germany, August 5, 2026, after the police said explosives experts examined a drone near a runway, and after a DHL cargo aircraft hit an unknown object as it was climbing away from the airport overnight, prompting an unscheduled landing in Hanover, according to a source familiar with the incident. (REUTERS)A day earlier Donald Tusk, Poland’s prime minister, had said he had intelligence that Russia intended to hit European countries supporting Ukraine with drones or missiles, then claim the strikes were accidental. Russia wanted to “paralyse” NATO, he said, by testing Article 5 of their treaty, which pledges that an attack on one will be treated as an attack on all. A tepid response by allies would cast doubt on that commitment.

Russia has been staging covert operations and deniable provocations against European countries for many years. Since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in 2022 they have increased. These have included incursions by reconnaissance drones, hacking, arson, parcel bombs targeting cargo flights and plots to kill executives of leading European arms firms. In recent months the pace of such shadowy attacks appears to have risen again. The Russian operations have three main goals, according to analysts and security officials: trying to coerce European countries into halting their support for Ukraine; raising the costs of providing that support; and attempting to make NATO look powerless.

“It feels like we are moving from a series of grey-zone incidents into a continuous campaign,” says Andrew Thomson, a British former diplomat who is now at Monarch, a German security provider. In just the week before Mr Tusk and Mr Macron spoke out, Italian jets on a NATO mission shot down an explosives-laden drone that had flown into Lithuania from Belarus, and others scrambled to intercept two Russian fighter jets that violated NATO airspace. In the same week, Russian drones struck a train in Ukraine within 2km of a Polish border crossing, soon after Boris Johnson, a former British prime minister, and several European security officials had travelled through. In the Netherlands the railway network was recently disrupted by the co-ordinated placement of pipes and cables on tracks around the country.

More significantly, in August an explosive-laden drone was flown into a cargo plane used to transport weapons for Ukraine at Germany’s Leipzig-Halle airport, though it failed to detonate. German authorities have blamed Russia for the attack and closed a Russian cultural centre in Berlin in retaliation.

Not all such incidents are easily attributed. Many Russian operations are designed to be deniable, and are thus termed “hybrid” or “grey-zone warfare”. There are far more such incidents than are officially reported, says Mr Thomson. They often target critical infrastructure or defence firms, and include “accidents” that damage key equipment, break-ins at sensitive sites and efforts to infiltrate or recruit agents. Individual incidents may appear random, but as a whole they show a pattern of disruption and intelligence gathering.

In many cases acts of sabotage are conducted by local proxies or criminal gangs. Many may not know that their paymaster is Russia. The advantage of using freelance saboteurs is that it is harder to point the finger at Russia’s intelligence services. The disadvantage is that because they are not trained agents, they are more likely to bungle their missions.

“Ambiguity is part of the weapon itself,” says David Cattler, a former NATO intelligence official now at the Centre for European Policy Analysis, a think-tank in Washington. The victims’ uncertainty as to what has taken place makes it harder for European countries to reach consensus on a response. The incidents are calibrated to be large enough to have an impact while remaining below the threshold that would prompt a military response from NATO.

The havoc on the Dutch railways was a good illustration. Dutch authorities have not said whether the sabotage was linked to Russia or was conducted by angry farmers, who had blocked roads during protests on the same day. Yet because Russia has been linked to other grey-zone incidents, it benefits from the fear and doubt even without being definitely blamed.

The key challenge facing Europe is how to respond. Many countries are taking defensive measures, such as installing protection against drones at airports and around other critical infrastructure. Some argue that Europe also needs to take stronger collective measures to raise the cost of hybrid attacks for Russia. It can retaliate by restricting the number of visas issued to Russians, expelling diplomats, closing consulates, imposing harsher sanctions and possibly by launching covert actions of its own against Russian interests.

“What Moscow respects most is strength,” says Mr Cattler. Unless Europe shows it is tough enough to deter provocations, Russia will continue to escalate. So far, its provocations have had no catastrophic results—but they might have done. Obstructions on tracks might derail a train. Drone attacks at airports could bring down an airliner. The riskiest approach would be to let Russia keep pushing until something cracks.