Without firing a shot, Russian President Vladimir Putin has over the past week managed to bring the war in Ukraine to millions of Europeans largely untouched by the conflict.
And it started not with a bang but a whimper.
As Danish prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, told anxious Danes Thursday night, after drones triggered major disruption at several airports, Europe should see “more violent and frequent hybrid attacks as a new reality.” But she did not cite Russia as the direct culprit – as perhaps the evidence is lacking so far, or attributing blame feeds too keenly Moscow’s aims – but instead as Europe’s main threat.
The lack of clarity is one symptom of these attacks. The anonymous culprit can’t – for a while – be named or stopped, regardless of the damage, or mild inconvenience they cause. And the wait or uncertainty is another. Frederiksen added another motive to the unknown attacker – that “they want us to no longer trust our authorities.”
The same story is playing out across Europe.
Did Russia really intend to send more than 20 drones into Poland? Was the 12-minute violation of Estonian airspace down to the poor training of Russian pilots, as the top US general in Europe, Alexus Grynkewich, has suggested, or a widening of Moscow’s aggression? How could a hacking attack grounding various flights across Europe days later be just an unconnected coincidence?
After three days of airport closures, and the reported spotting of a Russian military vessel sat off its coast with its transponders off, Danish officials are still not clear who is behind the attacks.
Frederiksen admitted the risks of both hasty wrong answers and late answers. Danish military intelligence said Thursday night they could not “name” the culprits, while the head of internal security police, PET, said “the risk of Russian sabotage in Denmark is high.”
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen is interviewed about drone activity in Copenhagen, Denmark, on Tuesday. – Emil Nicolai Helms/Ritzau Scanpix/AP
Denmark is otherwise open about the threat of Putin. It has given Ukraine F16s, will help them build drones and is arming itself with long-range missiles as part of deterrence efforts.
Western officials wrestle daily with a paradox of hybrid warfare – whether to apportion blame or not.
Does blaming the real culprit – especially if it is Russia – actually bolster the discord and anxiety they wish to sew? Or does failing to highlight the growing threat instead leave society blind and unprepared to the problem until the moment when hard defensive actions and choices are needed? It is a lot easier, politically and hypothetically, to shoot down a Russian jet after months of publicly blaming Moscow for airport closure and chaos.
For months, the specter of sabotage has crept over mainland Europe.
The United Kingdom – another fervent sponsor of Ukraine’s defense – has seen young gang-like criminals recruited by Russia and convicted under the ferocious terms of the National Security Act for setting fire to a warehouse holding supplies for Ukraine. British police arrested a 41-year-old man and a 35-year-old woman in Essex under the same law last week.
Poland has jailed young Ukrainians for Russian-sponsored arson attacks.
Airport check-in software and a London nursery have been hacked – but possibly by criminal gangs, rather than Moscow’s agents.
Regardless of who’s responsible, the spread of this chaos and vulnerability has enabled Putin to bring the sense of widening conflict to Europe’s door, at the very moment the Trump administration demands Europe be more responsible for its own defense.
It makes the costs of the urgent and unavoidable support of Ukraine feel more palpable in European homes. It both amplifies the arguments of Putin appeasers – who propose giving him what he wants if he will just stop – and those who say the Kremlin’s appetite for aggression is only growing OK and needs a decisive response.
And the threat temporarily risks distracting European policymakers and budgets from the weightier and more consequential task of Ukraine’s front-line peril.
It is a miracle, to some degree, that Russia’s summer offensive has not taken more territory. But its assault on Ukraine’s cities is relentless and growing.
To Europe’s strained defense budgets, the past weeks of hybrid turmoil has added two costly immediate tasks: greater resilience in infrastructure to drones and hackers, and a wide-ranging, constant, expensive aerial defence against Russian drones and jets across their entire eastern border.
The cost of defense against multiple cheap drones has yet to mimic the extraordinary efficiency this new threat represents. A Dutch F35 can fire tens of thousands of euros’ worth of missile to shoot down a $30,000 Shahed-type polystyrene drone in Poland. But this is unsustainable over a long period and leaves an awkward choice between not intercepting intruders as it’s too expensive, or spending millions monthly in the robust infinite defense of NATO airspace.
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin tours an exhibition of military equipment while attending the joint Russian-Belarusian military drills at a training ground in the Nizhny Novgorod Oblast, Russia. – Sergei Bobylyov/AFP/Getty Images
It is not all roses for the Kremlin. There is a substantial risk their outsourced saboteurs – or spies competing for favour – overstep and kill civilians in a NATO country.
There is a risk Russia is blamed for things they did not do and provides cover for genuine organized crime to widen its activities. There is a risk the unpredictable nature of US President Donald Trump brings a reaction that is disproportionate to any escalation. He could also refuse to react at all, or massively overreact.
This wide-ranging unpredictability is how larger conflicts start.
Again, that is also not all in Putin’s favor. He is not a fan of stark risks. He invaded Ukraine after being told it would take weeks to overrun. He appears to have escalated against Kyiv and Europe in recent weeks only after a very chummy summit with China’s president, Xi Jinping.
But for now, these hybrid attacks are – by design or coincidence – imposing a sense of cost on ordinary Europeans for their governments’ enduring support to Ukraine.
The non-lethal inconveniences of airport delays, rising gas prices and hack-attacks are – without a trace of irony – comparable to those felt by ordinary Russian civilians in the very nation that launched an unprovoked invasion, killing innocent Ukrainians daily.
But in the past month, Europe has been given a new set of expensive worries for which there is no easy culprit or cheap fix.
That short-term distraction is surely enough of a win for Putin, in his fourth year of a war of existential import.
For more CNN news and newsletters create an account at CNN.com
