Russia’s increasing use of hybrid and gray zone attacks against European countries represents a major challenge for the US and NATO: how to respond without triggering a major conflict with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The Baltic countries, Poland and the Czech Republic in particular, are warning that acts of sabotage – and sometimes fatal attacks on individuals – allegedly sponsored by Russia are a growing threat to Europe and the defensive alliance.
“Russia constantly throws us new challenges, new risks, and the hybrid has become one of the most serious for the alliance,” said Estonia’s ambassador to NATO, Jüri Luik, in an interview with The Hill in Washington last week. .
“In all seriousness, we have to respond because if we don’t respond this will grow. And Russia will feel that there are no limits to what it can do in our countries, and obviously there is also a discussion among allies about what the best responses would be.”
Just in recent weeks, Estonia raised the alarm that Russia was behind the GPS blocking and disruption of a commercial flight, and that Russia is sowing confusion along the border eliminating maritime borders.
Poland has blamed the recent death of a Polish border guard as part of the larger hybrid threat from Belarus and directed by Moscow. Lithuania said Russia was “probably” behind an attack in March on a Russian political dissident in Vilnius.
A Russia-based hacker group is accused of carrying out a dangerous cyber attack against major hospitals in London this month, and cases of arson in NATO countries – targeting supply warehouses for Ukraine, but also civilian sites such as an Ikea in Lithuania – raised suspicions of Russian sabotage.
Secretary of State Anthony Blinken recognized at the end of last month that the Kremlin was “intensifying its hybrid attacks” against NATO members and raised the possibility of potential retaliation.
“We know what they want and we will respond both individually and collectively as necessary,” he said after a meeting with foreign ministers from NATO countries.
It is important that countries respond, including collectively like NATO, to show Russia that limits cannot be exceeded, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told a group of Baltic officials during a meeting in June.
But NATO countries will likely have to accept some risks because Russia’s hybrid activities are too profitable to stop. There is no clear answer to establishing deterrence, officials present at the meeting discussed.
John Kirby, White House national security spokesman, said the U.S. is closely watching Russia’s malign activity, but said its efforts to combat Putin have focused on sanctions that target Russia’s war economy and in increasing military and economic support for Ukraine.
“We are watching these, quote, ‘hybrid attacks,’ to use your phrase, closely,” Kirby said, responding to a question from The Hill about whether the issue would be addressed at this year’s summit of the leaders of the Group of Seven nations. . week, or at the NATO summit that will take place in Washington in July.
“We are certainly aware that these are the types of things that Russia has done in the past and has certainly continued to prove its ability to do now. It’s a page out of their playbook.”
The leaders of the Bucharest Nine — the countries on NATO’s eastern flank — expressed urgency in a statement earlier this week: “We are deeply concerned about Russia’s recent malign hybrid activities on Allied territory, which constitute a threat to Allied security,” they said.
“These incidents are part of an intensified campaign of activities that Russia continues to carry out across the Euro-Atlantic area, including sabotage, acts of violence, cyber and electronic interference, provocations related to Allied borders, disinformation campaigns and other hybrid operations.”
Luik, Estonia’s ambassador to NATO, said that responses so far have focused on defensive actions, but that sharing information between countries that suffer these types of attacks should be prioritized.
“Our position is that we must be unified, we must also be public, which means we must inform the public about what Russia is doing and explain how it works,” he said.
“And of course it is very important to exchange information between allies, because often the modus operandi of these various groups are quite similar. The exchange of information is important.”
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, following a meeting of NATO defense ministers on Friday, said the alliance is prioritizing intelligence sharing and that potential action likely includes imposing further restrictions on intelligence personnel. Russian, restricting their movements or possibly expelling them.
“What NATO has done is, in part, to make Allies aware that these are not individual random things, they are part of a Russian campaign or a campaign of hostile actions,” he said.
Elisabeth Braw, author of “The Defender’s Dilemma: Identifying and Deterring Aggression in the Gray Zone,” said these provocations are difficult to detect and predict. And there are no clear guidelines for a response.
“The reason there is no punishment is because this is not a military attack, so we don’t have a rule book on how to respond,” she said. There is also a major challenge in assigning blame. It took seven years to Czech authorities point to Russia as behind a 2014 arson attack.
“We can’t respond in kind and issuing convictions doesn’t exactly scare the perpetrator,” said Braw, who is also a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council on its Transatlantic Security Initiative.
Braw also questioned whether it is NATO’s responsibility to respond to attacks in gray zones and said it is more important for governments to build resilience in the public and private sector.
“Thinking hasn’t advanced much since the last NATO summit,” she said.
“The government will have to involve – when thinking about an appropriate defense and retaliation strategy… the private sector,” she added, citing a series of initiatives from Sweden, the Czech Republic, Finland and Australia as having built collaboration with society in general. in identifying and responding to such threats.
“The Swedish Psychological Defense Agency is a very good model for detecting misinformation coming from abroad… the Czech Republic has gray zone exercises that companies are invited to, I think it’s a brilliant scheme. This is something I hope other countries understand and essentially copy [and] paste what the Czechs did.”
Braw also suggested that by sharing information among NATO allies, member states that have not been victims of attacks could discreetly impose visa restrictions on individuals identified as perpetrators.
“Many governments are not fully accustomed to this whole-of-society approach and, frankly, it is really difficult. I work on a lot of these thorny issues and it’s really hard to figure out.”
Can Kasapoğlu, a non-resident senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, warned that Russia could increase hybrid attacks against defense production facilities in Europe around the NATO summit.
He highlighted as key warning signs a fire in May at a chemical factory in Germany, whose parent company is linked to manufacturing air defenses for Kiev, and the foiling of an arson attempt, labeled as terrorismin the Czech Republic.
“Thinking like a Russian and studying the Russian military mentality, [Europe’s] defense industry would be at enormous risk from Russian subversive and sabotage activities following the [NATO] summit. We have to be very careful about this,” she said.
Kasapoğlu called for a reshaping of how countries view Russia’s malign activity, pointing to actions that extend far beyond NATO’s European borders, to include Russia’s military and political influence campaigns in Africa, and propaganda efforts designed to turn the countries of the global south against the West.
“The first attitude we have to take is to understand that we don’t even have a certain diagnosis… If the diagnosis is wrong, I can guarantee that the treatment will be wrong”, he stated.
“I would call this unrestricted Russian warfare. The Russian way of war does not have to be, nor is it restricted by the Western intellectual boundaries we deceive ourselves with. The Russian way of war is unrestrained warfare. War by all means.”
The NATO summit, which will take place in Washington, from 9 to 11 July, will be a test of how seriously the alliance – and the US in particular – is taking the threat.
“The US position is of crucial importance in NATO, especially since the US is the host country, which gives it even more importance,” Luik told The Hill.
“The positions are not set in stone yet.”
This story originally appeared on thehill.com read the full story
