Maksym Beznosiuk
While international attention focuses on faltering US-led efforts to broker a peace deal and end the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin’s broader hybrid war against Europe continues to escalate. This campaign of unconventional warfare has been gaining pace for a number of years and poses significant security challenges that require greater coordination among European governments.
The European Union’s top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, highlighted the scale of the danger in a July statement condemning what she called “Russia’s persistent hybrid campaigns” against EU member states. According to Kallas, the list of Russian hybrid warfare activities in Europe includes cyber attacks, sabotage, disruption of critical infrastructure, physical attacks, information manipulation and interference, and other covert or coercive actions.
The Putin regime has spent more than a decade refining its hybrid warfare playbook. Many of the tactics currently being utilized against EU countries were first developed during the initial stage of Russia’s war in Ukraine, beginning in 2014. This allowed the Kremlin to maintain a degree of plausible deniability while actively working to destabilize and weaken the Ukrainian state from within. Since the onset of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the Kremlin’s hybrid war against Europe has also entered a new and more intensive phase.
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European intelligence officials told the Associated Press in July that the risk of serious injury or death is rising across Europe amid claims that Russia is recruiting untrained saboteurs via the internet to set fires near homes and businesses, plant explosives, and build bombs. Russia has reportedly been forced to rely increasingly on amateurs as hundreds of Moscow’s own spies have been expelled from European countries in recent years amid growing tensions between Russia and the West.
Russia currently stands accused of committing a variety of increasingly ambitious acts of aggression inside the European Union. In Poland, a massive fire that destroyed over 1,400 shops and service outlets in a Warsaw shopping center has been linked to Russian intelligence, prompting the closure of Russia’s Krakow consulate in May 2025.
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