With Europe already in the grips of its deadliest conflict since World War II, a shadowy campaign being waged beyond the battlefield in Ukraine threatens to spark a dangerous escalation between NATO and Russia.
And Germany‘s announcement Tuesday saying Russia was responsible for an incident reportedly involving an explosive-laden drone last month at Leipzig airport marks the latest sign that U.S. allies are woefully unprepared.
“The Leipzig attribution fits a pattern of intensifying Russian sub-threshold activity across Europe, and the trend line clearly points toward escalation rather than restraint,” Franz-Stefan Gady, adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security’s defense program, told Newsweek.
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He argued that such activities are particularly “attractive” to Moscow, which has denied responsibility for the incidents, because, unlike conventional military operations, “they degrade allied cohesion without triggering Article 5,” NATO’s mutual defense clause.
“There is no such thing as an accidental war or inadvertent escalation,” Gady said. “Escalation is always a political choice, and the real risk is that Russia eventually judges NATO too divided and too slow to respond given the relatively soft German response to Leipzig, which is exactly where allied preparedness falls short.
“There are still no agreed thresholds for a collective response, and the capabilities that would matter in a crisis, from SEAD [suppression of enemy air defense] to long-range strike and interceptor stocks, are severely depleted because of the Ukraine and Iran wars or need building up.”
‘Courting Extreme Danger’
The August 4 incident at Leipzig reportedly involved the use of a first-person view quadcopter carrying a Semtex-style plastic explosive load near a Ukrainian Antonov An-124 loaded with ammunition supplied from France. A day after the drone was found near the aircraft without detonating, a Boeing cargo flight reported colliding with an unidentified object believed to be a second drone that has yet to be recovered by German authorities.
The German Interior Ministry on Tuesday called the incident part of a “well-established pattern of Russian hybrid operations in Europe.” Germany summoned Russian Ambassador Sergey Nechaev, terminated the lease of the Russian House of Science and Culture in Berlin and Russia’s consulate in Bonn, and introduced new visa restrictions on Russian citizens.
Russian officials have repeatedly dismissed any involvement, with Nechaev most recently telling journalists on Wednesday that German authorities had yet to provide concrete evidence linking the incident to Moscow.
“We are being accused of no less than committing a terrorist act or attempting to do so,” Nechaev said, according to the Russian state-run TASS News Agency. “Some testimony, material evidence and professional assessments—in short, a solid case—should support such serious accusations. There is none. Therefore, all this is perplexing to say the very least.”
It’s far from the first time Russian officials have denied ties to drone incidents in Europe. Since at least September of last year, the same month that reported Russian drones crossed into Polish airspace, a number of small drones have been sighted near airports and infrastructure in several NATO countries, with officials often laying blame on Moscow.
Meanwhile, NATO has stepped up military exercises near Russia’s borders, including in the Arctic, where Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov accused the alliance Monday of “driving the region toward militarization and creating hotbeds of international tension.”
As frictions intensify, Dmitry Trenin, academic supervisor at the National Research University Higher School of Economics’ Institute for Global Military Economics and Strategy in Moscow, told Newsweek that he felt “the threat is growing” of a direct clash between Russia and NATO.
“My feeling is that various European governments have come to the conclusion—indeed, illusion—that Russia will not dare touch them in any retaliatory strike,” Trenin said. “In my estimate, they have come too far already and are courting extreme danger.”
And should such a confrontation erupt, he warned that deteriorating security conditions could escalate the conflict into a nuclear crisis.
“Nuclear deterrence, alas, has dangerously weakened through irresponsible behavior of NATO nations that de facto have become participants in the war in Ukraine,” Trenin said. “As a result, we may be headed toward a more dangerous version of the 1962 Cuban missile crisis [that was aborted at the last moment].
“I cannot imagine a Russia-NATO conflict which is only fought with conventional weapons.”
Two Wars Converge
Russian President Vladimir Putin has made clear since launching the war in Ukraine in February 2022 that Western powers would pay a price if they came to Kyiv’s defense.
Since then, Ukraine has received or been promised hundreds of billions of dollars in financial, military and humanitarian aid, most of which has come from the U.S. and other NATO member states. Levels of weapon shipments have expanded over time, to include tanks, missile systems, air defenses and fighter jets.
And even as President Donald Trump publicly questioned open-ended support for Kyiv, U.S. intelligence has reportedly played a key role in supporting Ukrainian strikes on Russian territory. Reports have also alleged Russian intelligence aiding Iran target U.S. military bases in the Middle East since Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu launched their joint war on the Islamic Republic in February of this year.
Conflicts raging in Europe and the Middle East have intersected in other areas as well.
Iran-designed Shahed suicide drones, variants of which were implicated in last year’s incursion into Polish airspace, have become a primary tool in Russia’s arsenal, while the Financial Times reported Tuesday on alleged leaked correspondence indicating Moscow may be helping Tehran to build supersonic cruise missiles.
In July, Ukraine reportedly struck an Iranian vessel tied to trade with Russia in the Caspian Sea, marking perhaps the first direct instance of spillover between the two wars.
The overlapping crises have also had an impact on Europe’s security. Waning U.S. munitions stockpiles have delayed arms packages to European allies who already face criticism from the White House for their perceived lack of support against Tehran and its Axis of Resistance allies.
After a surprise visit by the CIA Director John Ratcliffe to Moscow last week—the first known trip of its kind by a U.S. spy chief to Russia since the beginning of the Russia-Ukraine war—fueled speculation that the Kremlin may be planning an attack, Trump sought to allay fears that Putin was planning a major escalation.
“I’ve had good talks with him,” Trump said at the White House amid the trip. “He’s not going to be attacking a NATO territory.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio also sought to put rumors surrounding the CIA visit to rest during an interview Wednesday with Fox News, during which he referred to the trip as “routine” and also downplayed the impact of alleged Russian assistance to Iran.
“Despite whatever differences we may have geopolitically, the United States does have to be able to communicate with Russia from a very practical perspective,” Rubio said. “They have the second-largest nuclear stockpile in the world. The United States has to be able to communicate with them.”
A War No One Wants
Even if few expect a sudden Russian military invasion of NATO, the growing tempo of incidents being attributed to Moscow by European powers carries a risk of conflagration.
“It is certainly true that the more aggressive the Russian operations, the greater the risk of the kind of disruption or loss of life that would demand some commensurate response from Europe,” Mark Galeotti, executive director of Mayak Intelligence and adjunct fellow in Russian geopolitics at the London-based Council on Geostrategy, told Newsweek.
Galeotti argued that Europe’s retaliation would likely come in the form of “reciprocal cyberattacks, seizing more Russian civilian shipping or assets, or perhaps even more assistance to Ukraine, in effect outsourcing a kinetic response,” rather than mounting its own offensive on Russia.
Moreover, he said that “Europe doesn’t have the means or desire to start a war with Russia,” nor did he assess that Moscow was “preparing to attack Europe [even if it can]” in the conventional sense.
Even if Russia “has the forces to launch an initial assault,” he said, it would likely struggle “to then reinforce its deployment and escalate as NATO responds.”
For now, it seems both sides are content with keeping their bout behind the scenes for as long as they can.
“Neither side wants such an escalation into direct military confrontation,” Galeotti said.
Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Jason Lemon and Dave Siminoff.