Europeans are rattled. A bomb-laden drone attacked a Ukrainian cargo plane in the eastern German city of Leipzig, but it failed to go off. In another incident, German authorities revealed that they had thwarted an assassination plot targeting the CEO of one of the country’s leading drone-manufacturing companies. Outside Rome, a titanic blast destroyed an ammunition factory whose products are used by Ukrainian forces—just a few days after another explosion hit a plant in Bulgaria whose owner was previously reported to have been targeted by Russian security services. And a Spanish fighter jet on a NATO air-policing mission shot down a drone that crossed into Romanian airspace. A NATO spokesperson said that the drone was probably of Russian origin.
And that was just the first half of August.
Europeans are rattled. A bomb-laden drone attacked a Ukrainian cargo plane in the eastern German city of Leipzig, but it failed to go off. In another incident, German authorities revealed that they had thwarted an assassination plot targeting the CEO of one of the country’s leading drone-manufacturing companies. Outside Rome, a titanic blast destroyed an ammunition factory whose products are used by Ukrainian forces—just a few days after another explosion hit a plant in Bulgaria whose owner was previously reported to have been targeted by Russian security services. And a Spanish fighter jet on a NATO air-policing mission shot down a drone that crossed into Romanian airspace. A NATO spokesperson said that the drone was probably of Russian origin.
And that was just the first half of August.
None of this is completely unprecedented. For many months now, Europeans have been assailed by a series of hostile actions, some clearly traced back to Russia, that have aimed to undermine Europe’s efforts to support Ukraine. Russia has cut undersea cables, jammed GPS signals, and staged sabotage using disaffected locals recruited through the internet. Some observers have taken to describing this campaign as gray-zone warfare, referring to aggressive measures that fall below the threshold of outright war.
Right now, though, the “gray-zone” modifier looks increasingly obsolete—especially given the growing brazenness of Russian threats accompanying its actions. On Aug. 12, Russian President Vladimir Putin pledged unspecified retaliation against any countries daring to interfere with Russia’s so-called shadow fleet of oil tankers—a clear reference to a recent decision by the European Union that would allow the confiscation of Russian oil from sanctioned vessels. In an interview two days later, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov extended the threat to include any countries that dare to support Ukraine in its fight against the Russian invaders. “We will adopt much harsher methods to destroy everything that enables the West to fuel Kyiv’s war machine,” he declared. “We are already doing this, and [the Europeans] are already moaning.”
Yet Europe continues to dither. German officials seem to be awaiting proof that Russia was behind the Leipzig attack before responding—a good example of why Moscow always goes to great lengths to make its involvement deniable. But if Europeans think that observing the diplomatic niceties will save them, then they have another thing coming.
Putin and his minions have every reason to up the ante. For well over four years now, the men in the Kremlin have tried to defeat the Ukrainians through direct combat. Far from succeeding, they’ve now had to look on as Kyiv’s drones and missiles pound oil refineries and military targets deep inside Russia. Putin’s next-best option—getting his friend U.S. President Donald Trump to strong-arm Ukraine into accepting Russian peace terms through U.S.-led negotiations—has also petered out. That leaves plan C: an intensified effort to undercut European support for Ukraine, whether through subversion, intimidation, or influence operations that are aimed at elevating pro-Moscow parties and politicians. Putin’s most effective minion, former Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, fulfilled this function for years. Now, the Russian president is betting that his allies in Germany or France may soon be able to do even more.
For Putin, targeting Europe is the most obvious choice on a limited escalation menu. There’s little reason to believe that Russia isn’t already throwing everything it has at Ukraine short of nuclear weapons—and there is ample reason to conclude that the Kremlin won’t go that far. (And even if Putin did break the taboo and deploy a tactical nuclear weapon, it would be unlikely to stop the Ukrainians from fighting.) Europe, on the other hand, is vulnerable, divided, and prone to passivity in ways that give the Kremlin a lot of leverage.
The only question at this point is how creative Putin will get. Unlike his European counterparts, the Russian president has professional grounding in the fine art of dirty tricks. The Soviet KGB, where Putin served for 16 years, placed particular emphasis covert operations, including sabotage, subversion, and targeted killings. Putin’s colleagues proved especially adept in their sponsorship of terrorism, supporting everyone from the Palestine Liberation Organization to the Official Irish Liberation Army, both of which received training and weapons shipments from the Soviets. KGB agents directly supplied rocket-propelled grenades, machine guns, and silenced pistols to the radical Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the same group that killed three and took more than 60 hostages at the OPEC summit in 1975 under the leadership of terrorist mercenary Carlos the Jackal. The Soviet-allied East German secret police, the Stasi, supported the Red Army Faction’s terrorist attacks in West Germany; Putin served as a KGB liaison to the Stasi during his stint in East Germany in the 1980s. The campaigns of violence staged by all these proxies proved highly destabilizing for European democracies throughout the last three decades of the Cold War.
Back then, many of the groups supported by the Kremlin were left-wing in orientation. Putin’s Russia is less strictly bound by ideology, which might make it a more flexible partner. Some groups are clearly out of bounds, such as the Afghan branch of the Islamic State, which killed 149 people in an attack on a Moscow concert hall in 2024. Yet the Kremlin is also closely allied with Iran, has extended official recognition to the Taliban, and maintains good diplomatic relations with Hamas. In 2020, U.S. intelligence services concluded that Russia had offered bounties to Taliban insurgents for killing U.S. and allied troops fighting there.
Russia could easily leverage such contacts to find candidates for attacks on European targets—perhaps with the FSB supplying state-of-the-art fake documents and identities for the perpetrators. Potential attackers don’t even have to breach the EU border; a bloody assault on European tourists in a vulnerable overseas vacation spot could have the same effect. The Russians wouldn’t need to advertise their involvement (just as they didn’t during the Cold War). But they could then amplify the effect with their vast disinformation apparatus, perhaps touting fears of migrants and highlighting the fecklessness of current governments.
Aside from instilling fear in the minds of European voters, such an attack could also have the effect of enhancing the popularity of anti-establishment parties such as the Alternative for Germany (AfD) and the French National Rally (RN) of Marine Le Pen. The recent attack on the Berlin Pride parade, which killed one person and injured 29, appears to have given the already-surging AfD a boost in the polls just weeks before critical state elections next month that could see it take real power for the first time. Both the AfD and the RN have a history of receiving Russian support; both are deeply skeptical of aid to Ukraine. Putin will be happy to make mischief that will help them win more votes, especially now that he seems to be getting bolder.
Weaponizing migration offers similar benefits. In 2015-2016, Russia orchestrated a campaign to push migrants across its borders into Norway and Finland. In retrospect, that effort looks like a dress rehearsal for a subsequent move in 2021, when Moscow-allied Belarus, likely collaborating with Russia, triggered a brief but intense crisis in the EU when it started sending large numbers of undocumented migrants across its borders with Poland and Lithuania. True, those borders have since been beefed up—but that’s hardly cause for complacency, as the recent discovery of tunnels under the Belarus-EU border shows. Another promising candidate for such an operation is Libya, where Russia has built up a strong military presence as part of its efforts to support would-be dictator Khalifa Haftar. Libya is also a major transit route for migrants to Europe. If it chose to put pressure on Europe that way, it probably wouldn’t be much of a lift for the Kremlin to organize a full-scale boat people crisis.
According to the Europeans themselves, critical infrastructure across the continent remains vulnerable. In 2022, cyberattacks on oil refineries in Belgium, the Netherlands, and Germany sent shockwaves through the European energy industry. Just imagine what hacking tools assisted by artificial intelligence might accomplish today in determined hands. The EU is in the process of implementing a wide-ranging program for improved cybersecurity, but one is inclined to wonder if Brussels bureaucrats are au courant with the latest innovations. Just a few days ago, hackers successfully attacked Ceva, one of Europe’s biggest logistics and shipping firms, causing delays for deliveries across the continent. Perhaps it was just a coincidence that the hack took place at the same moment that Ukraine is staging long-distance raids on logistics facilities run by Wildberries, the Russian equivalent of Amazon.
Until now, Russian attempts at physical sabotage have been hampered by Moscow’s reliance on freelance operatives recruited through the internet. If Putin wants to get more serious on this front, whether by using trained saboteurs or better-controlled drones, he will have plenty of targets to choose from. European infrastructure still has plenty of vulnerabilities—from critical undersea cables and pipelines to liquefied natural gas terminals. Poland and the Baltic states have let it be known that they’re stepping up security around power plants, dams, and other sensitive installations, specifically citing “false-flag” provocations that Russia might try to pin on Ukraine.
Germany’s top general has warned that Moscow is using drone incursions to probe NATO air defenses. His comments in the Wall Street Journal came just a few days after the same paper reported that U.S. intelligence agencies are worried that the Kremlin could be preparing to stage a provocation to throw the Western alliance off balance. That could take the form of a Russian military incursion into some hard-to-defend bit of NATO territory, such as the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard in the Arctic Ocean, where Moscow already has a nearly century-old presence. The aim would be to widen rifts within the alliance and sow doubts about the credibility of its security guarantee to a member under attack.
Yet any attack on NATO territory would entail considerable risk. The alliance might respond by triggering Article 5, its collective security clause—and then Russia could find itself at war not just with Ukraine.
The problem is that NATO so far has done little to suggest that it can marshal such resolve. Trump is distracted by his disastrous war of choice in Iran, and the Europeans themselves are still riven by differences over Ukraine and how best to help it. As Putin’s prospects of victory on the battlefield diminish, he may decide that he has even less to lose by intensifying his European plan C.
