Yes, Russia really could attack the EU
How to rationalise the irrational
There were two stories last week that should worry all Europeans.
The first was about a foiled bomb plot in Germany. A drone carrying explosives was found in an airport, poised to detonate next to a commercial plane. Authorities haven’t identified who was responsible for the attempted attack as the investigation is ongoing, but what we know already points to a likely suspect. For one thing, the planes the drone was trailing were Ukrainian, carrying ammunition from Western supporters on the way back to Ukraine. We also know that Russia has been involved in similar attempted attacks as recently as 2024, with parcel bombs that had been or were about to be loaded onto planes, as well as smuggling explosives and detonators around Europe, concealed as normal household goods.
It doesn’t take a Sherlock Holmes to work out who may have been responsible for the latest incident.
The second story concerned US intelligence suggesting Russia was planning an attack on a neighbouring NATO country, potentially Poland or one of the Baltic states. With the US distracted by its war against Iran and missile reserves depleted, security services fear that Moscow may try to provoke NATO through some act of aggression. This could be anything ranging from a cyberattack against critical infrastructure, right up to a small-scale military incursion onto the territory of an EU/NATO state.
This latter scenario might appear incredible (quite literally) at first glance. After all, is Russia not also tied up with its war in Ukraine? It hardly has the men and materiel to spare for a conflict with NATO.
Yet we should not dismiss the idea, and indeed we should take it very seriously.
As the first story demonstrated, we know that Russia is already willing to carry out acts of physical aggression against European countries and on our territory. Whether sabotage, arson or attempted assassination, it has been due to a mix of good fortune and the hard work of our own security services that these Russian attacks have yet to turn into mass casualties on European soil. It is unlikely that this run of near-misses will last forever and Russia will keep trying as long as its leaders feel they have an incentive to do so.
What is this incentive? The Kremlin likely assesses these attacks as low-cost ways to scare us out of supporting Ukraine. With US assistance severely curtailed since Trump’s return to the White House, Europe plays the preeminent role in providing Kyiv with military and financial support. If Europe could also be pushed out, then Ukraine would be left isolated and Russia would have a much easier time. Other potential ‘provocations’, like a rogue drone or missile strike hitting a real target (not just crashing in the dirt as we’ve seen so far), would serve a similar purpose. Russia is betting that Europe’s leaders are too weak to stand up to such intimidation and would sooner pull back than risk further conflict.
At this point, some may say that while a limited action of this kind, perhaps disguised as a rogue terrorist act or blamed on Ukrainian jamming, is plausible, surely we can’t apply this same logic to the explicit use of Russia’s armed forces in a (limited) invasion of an EU/NATO country?
It is true that the nature of such an attack would be quite different. Significant casualties would move from a possibility to an absolute certainty. Moscow would have to contend with the much higher risk that European states would mobilise their own armed forces in opposition. The dangers for things to get out of hand would be much greater.
But the potential rewards would be greater too. One of Putin’s long-standing dreams is to break NATO by breaking the transatlantic alliance. With American faith in Europe’s defence at its weakest in decades, Putin may well conclude he has a once in a lifetime opportunity to show that the promise of NATO’s Article 5 is just a paper tiger. He would not even need to win such a conflict or hold any ground; Russian troops could be routed from Poland or Lithuania within a few short weeks. Yet so long as America failed to turn up and declined to intervene in this fight, then the Western military alliance would be shattered and Putin would claim a great victory.
Nonetheless, for many in Europe this may still seem like a bridge too far – a significant step up in the level of conflict that exists between Russia and Europe. This is an important point because it highlights a mismatch between the Russian and European/Western conceptions of the current dynamic.
We have all become increasingly familiar with the idea of ‘hybrid war’. In Europe, we essentially ascribe the term to Russia as an umbrella for all the hostile activities they carry out that fall short of conventional armed forces clashing on a battlefield (cyberattacks, sabotage, ‘little green men’ and so on).
Russia, however, does not use the term this way. In their own doctrine, hybrid war includes all those smaller-scale actions but also runs up to and includes conventional warfare. For instance, the Russian intervention in Syria was considered by the Russians themselves to be an example of hybrid war; not something which excludes conventional force, but simply a form of warfare that runs along multiple vectors. As the Institute for the Study of War explains: “The Russian conception of hybrid war is much more expansive [than the Western one]. It covers the entire “competition space,” including subversive, economic, information, and diplomatic means, as well as the use of military forces extending above the upper threshold of the “grey zone” concept”.
What this means is that, while both sides use the term hybrid war to discuss the current state of conflict, they do not mean the same thing. From the Russian perspective, a conventional attack on an EU/NATO state would be a continuation of the existing type of conflict, rather than breaking out into something new. Psychologically, this is a much easier step to take.
Russian aggression is escalating and Europe needs to start imagining the unthinkable. There is no magic shield, there is no unbreachable line. If Putin’s armies are not turned back in Ukraine, then the danger for all of us will only grow and one day we will wake up to find the war has come to us.