Heads of government and intelligence services across Europe have sounded the alarm in recent weeks that Russia is escalating hybrid warfare. Some go even further.
- Within the next few months, Russia may send drones and robots against NATO territory, said Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk recently.
Similar warnings have come from American, Czech, Danish and German intelligence services.
- Germany risks being drawn into a violent conflict with Russia, said the head of Germany's foreign intelligence service BND, Martin Jäger, before the German Bundestag on Monday.
But there are also those who call for calm. Finnish President Alexander Stubb recently urged his European colleagues to "take a sauna and relax".
So who should you listen to – those who raise warning flags or those who play down the risks?
- The point is that all of this can be true at the same time, says Minna Ålander, analyst at the Center for Eastern European Studies at the Institute for Foreign Policy and expert on Russian hybrid warfare.
- Just because Russia has escalated hybrid warfare does not necessarily mean that it is prepared to expand the entire war.
At the same time, the escalated situation is a consequence of Europe taking on greater responsibility for supporting Kiev. A choice they were forced to make after the American president cast new doubt on America's commitment to the fate of Ukraine.
- We are more deeply and broadly involved in the Ukrainian war now, says Minna Ålander and points to how several countries manufacture drones and other weapons for Ukraine on European soil.
It has made European defense companies and logistics hubs targets for Russian sabotage. In August alone, there were six suspected Russian attacks against such targets in Europe, according to Minna Ålander.
- The border has started to blur. It is more difficult to distinguish between what is a hybrid war against Europe and what is an escalation of Russia's conventional war in Ukraine beyond Ukraine's borders.
At the same time as the warnings are pouring in, the Europeans are also advancing their positions on the ground.
On Monday, Sweden's government announced that 100 Swedish officers and the Patriot air defense system are being sent to Poland. Since August, there are also Swedish Jas 39 Gripen and a Visby corvette in place in Finland.
Finland, like Poland and the Baltic countries, has recently left the Ottawa Convention, which gives their armed forces the legal right to manufacture and use anti-personnel mines along the border.
In Estonia, troops are now being moved even closer to the Russian border. The country's first brigade is regrouping from Tapa to Jõhvi, just five miles from the border with the neighboring country to the east. New barracks and a military headquarters are being built there. In addition, a permanent military base for up to 1,000 soldiers is being built in the border town of Narva.
- We have to start at the border and win the first battles, says the head of the first brigade, Tarmo Kundla, to the Financial Times.
Estonia has also placed orders for long-range missile and robotic systems, with the capacity to strike targets deep inside Russia.
At the same time, the intelligence area is being overhauled. After the failed Russian assassination attempt on the airport in Leipzig, the government in Berlin made a controversial decision to give the country's domestic and foreign intelligence services (BfV and BND) completely new powers. Until now, they have only been allowed to collect information, now the government wants them to be allowed to intervene actively. This could mean, for example, that they are given the right to penetrate an attacker's computer system and carry out offensive counterattacks.
At the same time, large resources are being pushed to hire new analysts and agents.
- We are turning our intelligence service into a genuine security service (Geheimdienst), declared Minister of the Interior Alexander Dobrindt recently.
On the other side of the Atlantic, developments are being followed closely. President Donald Trump has long threatened to withdraw troops from Europe, and this summer about 1,000 US troops left Lithuania. But at the end of September it was announced that a new American troop is on its way to the country. Lithuania's location between Belarus and the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad makes the area one of NATO's most vulnerable.
That the West finds itself in this heightened situation is a direct consequence of the choice of path that was made at the outbreak of war in 2022, Minna Ålander believes.
- What we are now seeing is the result of the strategy chosen at the beginning of the full-scale war, to support Ukraine "as long as it takes", rather than "whatever it takes". If we had instead decided to help Ukraine enough at the beginning and the war had reached a kind of end, then we might not have ended up here, says Minna Ålander.
