Increasingly dangerous hybrid attacks orchestrated by Moscow on European soil were intended to “scare” citizens and shake support for Ukraine, the EU’s high representative on foreign affairs Kaja Kallas has said.
European governments near the EU’s eastern border have been reporting an escalation in airspace incursions and other activity believed to lead back to Russia.
A recently foiled drone attack on a Ukrainian cargo plane on the ground in Leipzig airport has been attributed to Russia by the German government.
The best response to Russian provocations was to double down on financial support to Ukraine and back stronger economic sanctions to hurt Russia’s military industry, Kallas said.
The Ukrainian government has made an appeal to its western allies for help filling a $27 billion (€23.3 billion) shortfall in its defence budget and to replenish its stocks of Patriot interceptor missiles used to take out Russian ballistic missiles.
Senior sources in Kyiv are concerned the coming winter could prove extremely difficult to weather. Russia has intensified its bombing of Kyiv and other cities, exhausting Ukraine’s stretched air defences.
Speaking in Wicklow, Kallas asked countries to donate or sell ageing Patriot air-defence missile systems to Ukraine. “Every interceptor we provide to Ukraine means another Russian missile that does not reach another school, home or hospital,” she said.
Kallas was speaking at a press conference following an informal meeting of EU defence ministers hosted in Druids Glen resort as part of Ireland’s presidency of the Council of the EU .
The foreign policy chief said EU officials were preparing a major package of sanctions to bite Russia’s military and defence industry.
That would include greater EU-level restrictions to prevent European-made components from ending up in Russia’s military supply chain, she said.
Kallas said Vladimir Putin’s hybrid campaign was “testing” Europe’s defences. “We have to be ready to act on our words, otherwise those words are actually making us weaker,” she said.
Minister for Defence Helen McEntee said discussions about Europe’s defence were also discussions about Ireland’s national security.
“We are talking about not just protecting the people of Ukraine, but protecting the people of Europe and indeed Ireland more generally,” she said. “That [Russian] threat is not just a threat, these are actions that we are starting to see incur into European, and into EU member states.”
European governments had to be more creative in plugging the gaps that exist in the Continent’s defences, Kallas said. “We have not been fast enough, although the threat level is rising,” she told reporters on Tuesday.
The senior EU politician plans to put together a high-level group of political and military leaders, as well as officials, to table suggestions for how those gaps might be patched up.
The group will include figures from the governments of several EU states, the UK and Ukraine, to produce a report advising how Europe could better join up its military capabilities, she said.