Intelligence chiefs from the Czech Republic, Latvia and Sweden have told the Guardian, on the record, that Russia may test NATO with a direct attack on European territory within months. Polish PM Donald Tusk has briefed parliament on similar assessments. French President Macron has convened an emergency meeting. The willingness of normally reticent intelligence officials to speak publicly is itself the signal: they want the message heard. The immediate context is a systematic campaign of sabotage that has escalated sharply since the start of 2025. Unexplained fires at defence facilities supplying Ukraine have struck Italy, Bulgaria, Estonia and Slovakia. An explosives-laden drone was found next to a Ukrainian cargo plane at Leipzig airport. Denmark warned Russia is recruiting Danish citizens to sabotage defence firms. In Lithuania, an Ikea was set on fire. In France, coffins inscribed 'French soldiers in Ukraine' appeared under the Eiffel Tower. In the UK, two Russian-linked arsonists who targeted property connected to former PM Keir Starmer were jailed in June. The Rycroft review found Russian online disinformation was warping UK political discourse. The Guardian's Shaun Walker, who conducted the interviews across Prague, Riga and Warsaw, offers an important calibration: these warnings are not at the level of early 2022, when US intelligence had hard evidence of invasion plans. But the fact that sources chose to go on the record — unusual for intelligence officials — suggests a deliberate signalling campaign. They want European publics and politicians to understand the trajectory. The structural problem is clear. Russia's hybrid operations are designed to sit just below the threshold that would trigger NATO's Article 5 collective defence clause. Arson, sabotage, disinformation, recruited local proxies — each incident is deniable enough to avoid a military response, but the cumulative effect is corrosive. EU politicians are 'getting irritated' with the term 'hybrid war,' arguing these direct attacks amount to more than grey-zone activity. Yet the Western response remains limited to diplomatic expulsions, sanctions and public attribution. Germany expelled over 150 Russian diplomats after the Leipzig incident and tightened border controls, but the Schengen free-movement zone undermines enforcement — one Leipzig suspect reportedly entered Europe on an Italian tourist visa. EU sanctions target Russian banks and energy companies plus entities in the UAE, Thailand and China helping Moscow evade restrictions. There is growing willingness to clamp down on Russia's shadow fleet carrying oil in the Baltic and North seas. But the gap between what's happening and what's being done about it continues to widen. The Baltic states — Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania — present a particularly revealing dynamic. For decades they warned western Europe about Russian aggression. Now they're cautioning against panic, aware that a narrative of imminent tank incursions damages their own economies and societies, which is partly the purpose of Russian psychological operations. As one source told Walker, the Baltics prefer western Europe to see Russia as 'a chronic rather than an acute problem.' The deeper bind is domestic. European governments that redirect spending from social programmes to defence risk driving voters toward the very populist parties that benefit from Russian disruption. Putin's Kremlin openly welcomed the far-right AfD's success in German state elections. The calculus Russia is working to, as Walker summarises, is simple: 'They know even the most hawkish people in NATO countries would really like to avoid having a direct conflict.' That gap — between what constitutes war and what triggers a response — is where Russia operates, and where Europe's strategic ambiguity is becoming strategic paralysis.
