The swarm of Russian drones that flew into Poland this past week sparked outrage across Europe and dire warnings about violating NATO airspace — but no overt retaliation from a military alliance trying to avoid conflict with a nuclear-armed neighbor.
European officials blamed Moscow when the navigation system faltered this month on a plane carrying the president of the European Union’s executive branch. Officials say the plane was swept up in an intensifying Russian jamming operation, but in that case, too, they took no overt action.
Both incidents could have had deadly consequences, but instead, they fell short of anything that would provoke a forceful response. Such provocations are a hallmark of so-called hybrid or gray-zone warfare, which seeks to antagonize and destabilize countries through a combination of covert military, economic and disinformation-related measures, without overt attacks.
Russia has generally deflected the charges, counter-accusing European leaders of reflexively blaming Moscow for any problem.
Russia’s aggression has left some to openly express worry that it will take a major event to mobilize NATO into action.
The Sept. 11 attacks were the only time that NATO has invoked Article 5, which holds that an attack on one ally is considered an attack on all. Some Europeans are pushing to invoke it in response to hybrid strikes — a powerful statement, though what action would result from that, if any, is unclear.
Other potential responses could include retaliatory hybrid warfare, more military support for Ukraine and further economic penalties against Russia.
Asked this month about whether hybrid attacks could prompt an Article 5 response, which likely would involve military force, Mark Rutte, NATO’s secretary general, said it was always possible and that NATO would respond powerfully.
“Our reaction will be devastating,” Mr. Rutte said, though he would not discuss what it would take to trigger Article 5. “When it comes to hybrid, we are not naïve.”
Russian jamming disrupted the navigation system on a plane this month carrying the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, and delaying its landing in Bulgaria, according to a statement provided by E.U. officials and attributed to Prime Minister Rossen Jeliazkov of Bulgaria. The statement also quoted Mr. Jeliazkov saying that Russian jamming efforts have stretched from Finland to as far south as Libya, in North Africa.
The European Union is preparing another round of economic sanctions against Russia — its 19th — to further curb its oil trade, and Ms. von der Leyen has been considering how to hasten European independence from Russian energy. She has also been at the fore of efforts to siphon the interest from about $224 billion in frozen Russian assets being held in the bloc to help fund Ukraine.
Even a proportional tit-for-tat is very long overdue but I very much doubt anything will come out of this because nobody wants to take ownership for hard decisions and Russia knows this too.
Tit for tat is silly. Call them on it and increase sanctions sure. But mainly just keep ramping up weapons manufacturing and keep supplying Ukraine more and more. It’s that pressure that is slowly killing Russia which is why they’re doing shit like this to try to change the direction one way or another.
