Russia’s ongoing “hybrid war” in Europe involves assassination squads, arson attacks, sabotage of infrastructure and repeated air space violations by drones and missiles, Poland’s foreign minister, Radosław Sikorski, has said.
There is a growing acceptance within European governments that an escalation in Russia’s malign activities conducted inside EU territory needs to be met with a firm response.
EU officials in Brussels are preparing to sanction a further 1,600 individuals and entities connected to Moscow’s military industrial complex and its ballistic missile programme, as part of that response.
A foiled drone attack in Leipzig airport last month has galvanised support for tougher sanctions. Germany said it believes Russia was behind the failed attack, an assessment that has led Berlin to push for firm retaliation at national and EU level.
“We are no longer in regular peacetime”, Sikorski said on Wednesday. Poland’s foreign minister said Moscow’s campaign in Europe had expanded far beyond cyber attacks creating a “nuisance” online.
“Hybrid war means assassination squads. It means arson. It means blowing up moving trains like in Poland. It means breaches of airspace with drones and cruise missiles. We need to convince Putin that such actions are not for free,” he said.
EU foreign ministers began calibrating how the union should respond to the Leipzig drone plot, and the wider pattern of provocations from Moscow, during a meeting in Wicklow on Wednesday.
It was time for everyone in Europe to “wake up” to the reality of Vladimir Putin’s campaign, Latvian foreign minister Baiba Braže said. Brussels needed to be quicker in designing and approving new rounds of economic sanctions to hurt Russia, she said.
Kyiv is preparing for a winter of intense Russian bombardments in the war that began more than four years ago.
Ukraine’s foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha, who joined the EU discussion in Ireland, said Russia had developed fast, jet-powered drones that were harder to shoot down.
The Ukrainian government needed more Patriot air defences and interceptors to take out incoming ballistic missiles and bomb-laden drones, he said.
“Russia now attacks us every day, every day, especially [with] ballistic missiles and we don’t have enough quantities of interceptors to shoot them down,” he told reporters.
The attempted attack in Germany showed the Ukraine war was coming closer to EU states, Luxembourg’s minister, Xavier Bettel, said. “We should not forget if Ukraine collapses, who will be next,” he added.
UK foreign secretary Ed Miliband said the incidents were part of a Russian plan to send a “chilling effect” across Europe and divide Ukraine’s allies.
“I think it is very, very important that today we say we stand in solidarity with Ukraine,” he said. Miliband was invited to join the discussion in Wicklow by the Irish Government, which holds the rotating council of the EU presidency.
Finland’s foreign minister, Elina Valtonen, said her government was “open” to EU sanctions that cut off Russia’s aluminium supply chain, a move that would bar metals giant Rusal’s Limerick refinery, Aughinish Alumina, from shipping raw material to Russia.
“I think we need to now really explore all the options on the table in terms of tightening the sanctions. We know that Russia’s economy at the moment is more or less just a war economy, everything they produce is directly or indirectly targeted towards the war,” Valtonen said.
Minister for Foreign Affairs Helen McEntee, who was hosting the EU meeting in Druids Glen, said the Irish Government had backed the previous 21 rounds of sanctions. “You can be assured that Ireland will not be found wanting and we will work very closely with the [European] commission on any future sanctions,” she said.