What spooked Europe last week? The rumbles of Russia war grow louder
A week that rattled European capitals
The latest alarm began in Poland last week. Prime Minister Donald Tusk told parliament on that intelligence assessments pointed to a possible Russian plan for hybrid drone and missile strikes against countries supporting Ukraine, including Poland. He said Moscow could try to present such incidents as accidents, with the aim of weakening the willingness of NATO governments to invoke the alliance’s collective-defence commitments. The warning was unusually specific, although Tusk did not disclose the intelligence behind it.
Russian ally Belarus had just held military exercises from September 15 to 18 near its borders with Poland and Lithuania. The drills included mechanised and tank units and exercises involving counter-sabotage and drones. Parts of the exercise took place close to the Suwałki corridor, the narrow land connection between Poland and Lithuania that links the Baltic states to the rest of NATO.
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That does not mean the exercise was preparation for an attack. Belarus described it as defensive training. But the geography makes it difficult for European militaries to treat such activity as routine.
On September 18, French President Emmanuel Macron summoned political leaders for an intelligence briefing and said Russia’s hybrid campaign against Europe was intensifying. He pointed to the alleged Russian role in the drone incident at Leipzig airport and ordered work on protecting French critical infrastructure.The following day, the European Commission pushed the same issue onto the political agenda. Ursula von der Leyen proposed a European counter-hybrid playbook and a wider security mechanism to deal with sabotage, cyberattacks and drone incidents that fall below the traditional threshold of armed conflict.
The significance is less that Europe suddenly believes an invasion is imminent than European governments increasingly planning for the possibility that Russia could exploit the grey area between peace and war.
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The fear is really about NATO’s response
The core European anxiety is not simply that Russia might attack. It is whether Moscow could create an incident that NATO would find politically difficult to answer. A missile or drone that crosses into Poland, Lithuania or Latvia could be described by Moscow as accidental. If there were no clear declaration of war, NATO governments would have to decide whether the incident amounted to an armed attack under Article 5.
That ambiguity could be useful to Russia even without a large military operation. The Guardian quoted Czech intelligence chief Michal Koudelka as saying a limited incursion into a Baltic state, false-flag provocation or major influence campaign could theoretically happen within “months, not years”.
But Latvia’s intelligence chief Normunds Mežviets offered a much more cautious assessment. He said there were signs Russia was preparing for more decisive action but no indication of an imminent attack. Estonia’s foreign ministry has also urged people to ignore what it called panic on social media.
European intelligence agencies are not presenting a single forecast. They are describing a range of possible Russian behaviour.
Russia’s strategy may be less about invasion
Several Western analysts see Russia’s current strategy as an attempt to make Europe feel the cost of supporting Ukraine without necessarily starting a conventional war with NATO.
Russia has increasingly relied on sabotage, cyberattacks and intimidation rather than overt military aggression against NATO. It also notes that there is no visible massing of Russian troops along NATO’s borders comparable to the preparations that preceded the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. The logic is to exploit fear and political divisions while keeping the level of confrontation below the threshold that would trigger a unified military response.
A similar assessment comes from Poland’s Centre for Eastern Studies. Its September analysis describes three broad Russian objectives: forcing Ukraine towards subjugation, intimidating European governments into reducing their support for Kyiv and trying to pull Washington towards a settlement more favourable to Russia. The institute argues that the Kremlin remains confident that Western divisions can eventually work in Russia’s favour.
That helps explain why relatively cheap operations can have strategic value. A drone near an airport, an attack on infrastructure or a cyber operation does not have to cause enormous physical damage. Its value may lie in creating uncertainty about what comes next.
The Ukraine war has also demonstrated how effective drones can be when used in large numbers. The conflict has exposed NATO weaknesses in air defence and shown how inexpensive drones can threaten expensive military platforms. European militaries are therefore preparing for a battlefield in which mass drone attacks and electronic warfare are routine rather than exceptional.
Why has Europe panicked into war preparations?
A major source of anxiety in Europe is the US. The Trump administration continues to support NATO, but its approach has also forced European governments to contemplate a larger American military pullback. A Pentagon review of the US military presence in Europe could result in the withdrawal of up to 25,000 troops, as per reports. European officials are consequently trying to build more capacity of their own while keeping the US alliance intact.
That uncertainty changes the deterrence calculation. Russia does not necessarily need to believe that NATO would never respond. It only needs to believe that a sufficiently ambiguous crisis could produce disagreement before a response becomes unavoidable.
Poland has therefore pushed for more American forces on its territory. The US has also indicated progress towards a permanent US Army base in Poland, a move that carries significance well beyond its military footprint. It signals that the eastern flank is being treated as a central theatre of deterrence.
Europe is also discovering how much of modern defence depends on civilian infrastructure. NATO’s new resilience requirements published this month call for tested plans covering energy, food and water, healthcare, communications, transportation and continuity of government. The alliance specifically says civilian systems must be capable of supporting military operations during crisis and conflict.
This is one of the clearest lessons Europe has taken from Ukraine. A country can keep fighting only if electricity, hospitals, communications and transport continue functioning after repeated attacks.
Switzerland, despite its neutrality, has reached a similar conclusion. Its new security strategy calls for stronger resilience and greater defence capabilities in response to Russia’s war and the rise of hybrid threats. At the same time, Swiss authorities say a direct armed attack on Switzerland remains unlikely in the foreseeable future.
Britain’s discussion of household preparedness also fits into this wider shift. The government’s resilience campaign encourages people to maintain basic supplies for emergencies, while Chief of the Defence Staff Richard Knighton has described the present security environment as the most dangerous period of his military career. Importantly, the British guidance is not an instruction that war with Russia is imminent.
Moscow sees a different picture
The Kremlin rejects the European interpretation almost completely. President Vladimir Putin said last week that Russia poses no threat to Europe and accused Western governments of frightening their populations with a Russian threat. At the same time, he warned that the deployment of European troops to Ukraine would mean war with Russia.
Russian officials have also increasingly portrayed NATO itself as a party to the Ukraine war. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on September 15 that NATO was “de facto” at war with Russia because of its military and other support for Kyiv. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko has said Moscow is incorporating NATO’s expanding military infrastructure into its own defence planning.
This worldview creates a dangerous possibility. European governments interpret Russian military preparations and hybrid operations as evidence that Moscow may be preparing to test NATO while Moscow interprets European rearmament and military planning as evidence that NATO is preparing for confrontation with Russia. The Leipzig drone incident illustrates the problem. Germany attributed the episode to Russia. Moscow rejected the accusation and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov described the allegation as effectively an escalation towards “real war”.
The danger is escalation without a big war
There is a paradox at the heart of Europe’s current anxiety. The most dangerous scenario may not be a Russian decision to launch a full-scale war against NATO. It may be a sequence of smaller actions that gradually erode the distinction between peace and conflict. Russia can test European airspace, infrastructure and political resolve. NATO can respond with more troops, exercises, surveillance and defensive deployments. Moscow can then portray those moves as proof that Europe is preparing an offensive war. Each side’s defensive preparations become evidence for the other side’s fears.
That is why the Baltic officials’ caution is notable in this context. They are not dismissing the Russian threat but are warning that exaggerated predictions can themselves become strategically useful to Moscow by creating fear and economic uncertainty.
Europe’s recent moves therefore amount to something more complicated. Governments are trying to make war less attractive by demonstrating that their societies can withstand pressure. The problem is that deterrence only works if Moscow believes NATO will act collectively.
For now, the evidence supports sudden heightened preparation, but not that a Russia-NATO war is about to begin. The intelligence warnings are serious but contested. What has unquestionably changed is Europe’s willingness to plan for the possibility. After years of treating large-scale war as a remote contingency, European governments are now building their security policies around the possibility that the next Russian challenge could arrive without a formal declaration, and that the first battle might be over whether Europe can agree on what happened at all.
