GPS jamming, spy assassinations and drone incursions: Russia’s ever-growing attempts to destabilise Nato
A “huge number” of Russian drones were shot down in Polish airspace for the first time since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, prime minister Donald Tusk has said.
Poland scrambled both Nato and its own air defences to intercept the drones, while European leaders rallied in support and widely condemned the incursion.
Although the defensive military alliance is not yet treating the incident as an attack on one of its members, it marks the latest in Russia’s attempts to destabilise Nato (attempts of which seem to be escalating).
“Russia tests out whether the West will tolerate something which ought to be totally unacceptable and intolerable – and each time they find the answer is yes,” Keir Giles, senior fellow of the Russia and Eurasia programme at Chatham House, told The Independent.
Moscow blurs the line between peace and war, Mr Giles explained, steadily escalating semi-covert and implausibly deniable operations without getting a response. This dates back to at least 2014, when Russia’s military intelligence service, the GRU, stepped up activities across Europe, including the Czech depot explosion – an event described as indistinguishable from acts of war, yet met with inaction.
“So what does Russia do? It creates the environment in which they are able to get closer and closer to achieving their objectives through military aims without anybody noticing. And that’s the classic definition of salami tactics.
“You get into a state of war, a slice at a time, and that means that people don’t realise or don’t react to what’s going on.”
Nato states online that its relations with Russia are at their lowest point since the Cold War.
A spokesperson for the alliance told The Independent: “Nato’s position on Russia has been consistent and transparent throughout, and it is enshrined in the declaration of the Nato Summit in The Hague, in June, in which Russia is categorised as a ‘long-term threat’.”
The alliance was founded in 1949 by 12 states, including the UK, US, France, Canada and several western European countries as a defensive military alliance, in part to deter Soviet Expansion. Poland joined in 1999.
Here, The Independent looks at other key moments where Russia has provoked Nato
On March 4, former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were found severely ill on a bench in Salisbury, the UK.
A type of military-grade nerve agent, Novichok, developed by Russia had been applied to the door handle of his home.
After being jailed in 2006 over Russian accusations of spying for MI6, he was pardoned and resettled in the UK in 2010.
