What did Germany do in response? It closed Russia's cultural centre in Berlin and the Russian consulate in Bonn. Russia's ambassador got a talking to, with most EU governments joining in. And that was it.
Now, you might wonder: is closing a consulate really the most appropriate response to an attempt to blow up an airplane? No, it isn't, and experts are warning that this kind of reaction is inviting Russia to escalate its campaign even further.
This year alone, a Russian drone hit a Romanian residential block, injuring two; Russians also set fire to train infrastructure in Latvia while pretending to be Ukrainians; and Russia is constantly jamming GPS over the Baltics, leading to around 123,000 flights disrupted in the first four months of 2025 alone.
The underlying goal of such attacks is to test Europe's ability to respond. “Russia sees what it can do until Europe actually reacts,” said Keir Giles, a British expert on Russian military doctrine. Concretely, this means avoiding actions that would trigger Article 5, NATO's mutual defence clause.
Increasingly, many attacks are aimed at achieving tactical or operational benefit in Russia's invasion of Ukraine. “In the early stages, in 2023 and 2024, the campaign was targeted against logistics and communications in Central Europe. More recently, they've targeted arms production and delivery capability to support Ukraine,” said Giles.
It's also psychological: “Russia wants European citizens to associate support for Ukraine with increasing chaos at home. More cyber attacks, more infrastructure sabotage,” said Maksym Beznosiuk, security analyst and fellow at GLOBSEC. “They want to plant fear in Europeans' minds.”
And then, there's 'random' noise. “It's not always clear whether an unexplained incident is part of the Russian campaign,” said Giles. Yet, these incidents are, by and large, attributed to Russia with no other potential culprits identified.
“In all of these circumstances, Russia gathers intelligence on Europe's vulnerabilities,” said Giles.
To describe these attacks, European leaders have adopted a catchy term: “hybrid warfare”. First coined in 2007, it means the coordinated use of military and non-military tools, kept deliberately deniable and below the threshold that would trigger an armed response.
When Germany's interior and foreign ministers blamed Russia for the attempted drone attack, they said it followed the pattern of previous Russian “hybrid attacks”. Shortly after, the EU's foreign policy head Kaja Kallas gave these attacks an even more unusual name: “kinetic hybrid attacks,” – an oxymoron, as kinetic means the use of physical force.
Why do European leaders insist on using the term “hybrid”? They do so because it “absolves them of the responsibility for doing anything about it because they're dealing with something very complex, serious, and impossible to do anything about,” said Giles.
Stumbling into war
According to experts, these attacks will escalate.
“Winter is coming and Russia is in a very difficult situation. They will continue to put maximum pressure on Ukraine, hoping that Ukraine will fall, but then also do everything to reduce the willingness or ability of European countries to support Ukraine,” said Kristi Raik, the director of Estonia's International Centre for Defence and Security.
So far, Europe's reaction to these attacks has not been very impressive. “Whatever Europe is doing, does not bring Russia any consequences,” said Giles. “The lack of real response is extremely dangerous. It invites Russia to attack further.”
So what could it do instead?
Europe should deter Russia by communicating the consequences of an escalation upfront, David Gioe, director of studies for the Cambridge Security Initiative told us. “For every arms warehouse that you destroy, we are sending 10 more Storm Shadows [British cruise missiles] to Ukraine. For every drone we find with explosives in Germany, we are sending 10 Taurus long-range missiles,” he said.
Today, no such understanding exists. NATO deters only based on the threat of its fighting force, 32 countries strong, not on concrete consequences attached to actions.
“The most obvious consequences to Russian attacks on Europe should be increased support of Ukraine,” said Giles. “In the immediate term, the top priority has to be that the upcoming winter doesn't become an opportunity for Russia to finally achieve its objective to make life in Ukraine impossible.”
The threat of real war looms: Russia continues to wage its “hybrid war” only to risk stumbling into a conventional one with NATO – to its own surprise and to that of NATO alike, Gioe warns.
This isn't such a far-fetched scenario. “There are hawks on the Russian side who have been saying for a long time that Russia is fighting with one hand behind its back. These voices are becoming louder and will become louder,” said Hanna Notte, a senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, to the Wall Street Journal.
She said that these Russian hawks [those who prefer more extreme military means] are calling for the Kremlin to strike military and logistics targets inside European nations to win the war in Ukraine. “The key question is,” she added, “how far will Russia go? How much will they step up the game to deal with this problem?”
Russia may not decide to go to war with NATO, but it may miscalculate – as it did in its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The task for NATO is to make the risks of such a miscalculation clear.