Europe Is Already in a Shadow War With Russia. NATO Must Decide How to Respond

The warning came not from a covert cable but from people who usually stay silent.

Intelligence chiefs from the Czech Republic, Latvia, and Sweden spoke on the record this week. That alone should concern NATO planners. These are officials who typically discuss threats off the record, who measure every word against operational security. Their willingness to go public suggests they are trying to force a conversation that has been avoided for too long.

The message is blunt: Russia may be preparing to test NATO’s Article 5 commitment within months, not years. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk told his parliament that Russian drones or missiles could target NATO territory imminently. Emmanuel Macron summoned party leaders for an emergency meeting. The implications cut across every layer of European security policy.

A campaign in the grey zone is becoming harder to ignore.

The sabotage has been unfolding for months with escalating audacity. Since January, unexplained fires have hit defence facilities in Italy, Bulgaria, Estonia, and Slovakia—plants that supply weapons to Ukraine. An explosives-laden drone was found next to a Ukrainian cargo plane at Leipzig airport. In Denmark, authorities warned that Russia is recruiting Danish citizens to sabotage defence companies. An Ikea in Lithuania caught fire. Five coffins bearing the inscription “French soldiers in Ukraine” appeared under the Eiffel Tower. In the UK, two Russian-linked arsonists were jailed for targeting property connected to Keir Starmer.

European governments have grown quicker at naming Russia publicly, but naming is not the same as stopping. Germany expelled over 150 diplomats after Leipzig and promised tighter border controls. The Schengen zone makes that nearly enforceable: one suspect entered Europe with an Italian tourist visa. Sanctions blacklist Russian banks and a shadow fleet moves oil across the Baltic and North Sea. None of it has slowed the campaign.

The real danger is not invasion. It is paralysis.

Russia’s strategy appears designed to exploit the very hesitation it counts on. The Kremlin knows that even the most hawkish Nato members prefer avoiding direct conflict. The sabotage operations fall deliberately below the threshold that would trigger collective defence. They create chaos without declaring war. They erode support for Ukraine without firing a shot at a NATO soldier.

This is not a new Soviet playbook, but it shares DNA with one. Shaun Walker, the Guardian’s eastern Europe correspondent, recently uncovered KGB documents from the 1970s and 80s describing a phase called “the special period”—a state between peaceful coexistence and open war, marked by relentless sabotage. The pattern is recognizable. The context is not.

Europe’s political bind is worse than its military vulnerability.

The harder question is what governments should do, not whether they should respond. Every option carries risk. Escalate too forcefully and Russia gains its desired pretext—a narrative of Nato aggression that justifies further mobilization. Escalate too softly and the sabotage continues, eroding public confidence in the state’s ability to protect itself.

There is a domestic political dimension that makes the calculation even messier. Governments that prioritize defence spending over social programs risk pushing voters toward populist right parties. The AfD’s recent success in German state elections is the clearest example. Friedrich Merz’s CDU lost ground to the far-right, and the party is now facing internal pressure. Marine Le Pen’s influence in France follows a similar logic. Leaders sympathetic to Moscow gain power when citizens feel unsafe but see their governments choosing tanks over hospitals.

The Baltics have been saying this for decades. Now Western Europe is listening.

For years, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania warned that NATO was underestimating Russian hybrid tactics. Their voices were dismissed as alarmist by capitals that felt geographically removed from the threat. That dynamic has shifted. The mood is no longer one of Baltic panic versus Western complacency. It is one of shared anxiety.

Estonia’s foreign ministry secretary Jonatan Vseviov cautioned against social media panic this week. That is not indifference—it is strategic communication. The Baltics understand that a narrative of imminent tank columns rolling into Riga or Tallinn damages their societies and economies as much as any missile strike. They prefer Western Europe to see the threat as chronic rather than acute. Acute crises trigger emergency responses that fade. Chronic threats justify sustained investment.

Trump’s America complicates everything.

Donald Trump has dismissed concerns about Russian attacks on Baltic NATO members and repeatedly criticized the alliance. His administration’s snap decision to ban CNN from White House coverage and the subsequent collapse of pooled media coverage signals a broader unpredictability. European leaders gathering at the UN in New York this week know they cannot rely on American guarantee in a crisis. That changes the calculus for every defence planning exercise.

The definition of war is shifting faster than policy can keep up.

Military leaders across the UK and Europe have suggested the continent is already at war. The term feels imprecise. What Russia is waging is a campaign using non-military methods that are nonetheless aggressive and coordinated. It is nothing like the war in Ukraine. But calling it something else—a shadow war, a hybrid campaign, a grey-zone conflict—has not produced effective responses.

The question for NATO is whether its members can agree on what constitutes a sufficient response before a test actually occurs. Can an attack on a defence facility in Italy be treated with the same seriousness as an attack on a military base in Poland? Does the alliance need new thresholds, new rapid-response mechanisms, new ways of attributing attacks that bypass the Kremlin’s deniability?

The intelligence warnings are specific enough to act on. The political will to act is not yet aligned. That gap is where Russia is operating—and where it expects to remain.

What happens next will define European security for a generation.

If NATO responds too weakly, the sabotage campaign will continue and intensify, sapping support for Ukraine and normalizing attacks on member states. If it responds too forcefully, it risks exactly the escalation Russia is calculating it can avoid. The path forward requires precision: measures that signal resolve without providing Moscow with the provocation it seeks.

European governments are beginning to see the writing on the wall. The intelligence community is speaking publicly now. That is not the behavior of organizations that believe the threat can be managed quietly. It is the behavior of organizations that believe silence has become more dangerous than scrutiny.

The shadow war is no longer shadowed. The question is whether NATO can respond before the next move forces its hand.