Grueling wars are now the global norm. For years, a brutal conflict has consumed Ukraine. For months, a grinding faceoff has convulsed the Persian Gulf. Now Russia is escalating a different kind of fight: a shadow war of violent, quasi-covert coercion against Europe. The continent, once a paragon of post-Cold War peace, faces a dangerous struggle, just as ambiguous signals from Washington make Moscow harder to deter.
In May, a Russian drone struck an apartment building in Romania, part of a broader uptick in drone incursions into NATO airspace. In July, a Russian missile detonated on Polish soil. German officials just recently blamed Russia for an explosive drone discovered last month at an airport in Leipzig. Attacks on German power plants have not been definitively attributed to Moscow, but suspicions run rampant because the pattern of Russian behavior is clear.
Russia has been waging shadow warfare against Europe for more than a decade. In 2014, Kremlin intelligence agents set off massive explosions at arms depots in the Czech Republic. This campaign intensified after Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine turned into an ugly slog, as the U.S. and Europe compounded Moscow’s miseries by helping Kyiv inflict a ghastly toll on Russian forces.
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