BRUSSELS — Russia’s drones and agents are unleashing attacks across NATO countries and Europe is now doing what would have seemed outlandish just a few years ago: planning how to hit back.

Ideas range from joint offensive cyber operations against Russia, and faster and more coordinated attribution of hybrid attacks by quickly pointing the finger at Moscow, to surprise NATO-led military exercises, according to two senior European government officials and three EU diplomats.

“The Russians are constantly testing the limits — what is the response, how far can we go?” Latvian Foreign Minister Baiba Braže noted in an interview. A more “proactive response is needed,” she told POLITICO. “And it’s not talking that sends a signal — it’s doing.”

Russian drones have buzzed Poland and Romania in recent weeks and months, while mysterious drones have caused havoc at airports and military bases across the continent. Other incidents include GPS jamming, incursions by fighter aircraft and naval vessels, and an explosion on a key Polish rail link ferrying military aid to Ukraine.

“Overall, Europe and the alliance must ask themselves how long we are willing to tolerate this type of hybrid warfare … [and] whether we should consider becoming more active ourselves in this area,” German State Secretary for Defense Florian Hahn told Welt TV last week.

Hybrid attacks are nothing new. Russia has in recent years sent assassins to murder political enemies in the U.K., been accused of blowing up arms storage facilities in Central Europe, attempted to destabilize the EU by financing far-right political parties, engaged in social media warfare, and tried to upend elections in countries like Romania and Moldova.

But the sheer scale and frequency of the current attacks are unprecedented. Globsec, a Prague-based think tank, calculated there were more than 110 acts of sabotage and attempted attacks carried out in Europe between January and July, mainly in Poland and France, by people with links to Moscow.

“Today’s world offers a much more open — indeed, one might say creative — space for foreign policy,” Russian leader Vladimir Putin said during October’s Valdai conference, adding: “We are closely monitoring the growing militarization of Europe. Is it just rhetoric, or is it time for us to respond?”

Russia may see the EU and NATO as rivals or even enemies — former Russian President and current deputy Kremlin Security Council head Dmitry Medvedev last month said: “The U.S. is our adversary.” However, Europe does not want war with a nuclear-armed Russia and so has to figure out how to respond in a way that deters Moscow but does not cross any Kremlin red lines that could lead to open warfare.

That doesn’t mean cowering, according to Swedish Chief of Defense Gen. Michael Claesson. “We cannot allow ourselves to be fearful and have a lot of angst for escalation,” he said in an interview. “We need to be firm.”

So far, the response has been to beef up defenses. After Russian war drones were shot down over Poland, NATO said it would boost the alliance’s drone and air defenses on its eastern flank — a call mirrored by the EU.

Even that is enraging Moscow.

Europeans “should be afraid and tremble like dumb animals in a herd being driven to the slaughter,” said Medvedev. “They should soil themselves with fear, sensing their near and agonizing end.”

Switching gears

Frequent Russian provocations are changing the tone in European capitals.

After deploying 10,000 troops to protect Poland’s critical infrastructure following the sabotage of a rail line linking Warsaw and Kyiv, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk on Friday accused Moscow of engaging in “state terrorism.”

After the incident, the EU’s foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said such threats posed an “extreme danger” to the bloc, arguing it must “have a strong response” to the attacks.

Last week, Italian Defense Minister Guido Crosetto slammed the continent’s “inertia” in the face of growing hybrid attacks and unveiled a 125-page plan to retaliate. In it he suggested establishing a European Center for Countering Hybrid Warfare, a 1,500-strong cyber force, as well as military personnel specialized in artificial intelligence.

“Everybody needs to revise their security procedures,” Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski added on Thursday. “Russia is clearly escalating its hybrid war against EU citizens.”

Walk the talk

Despite the increasingly fierce rhetoric, what a more muscular response means is still an open question.

Part of that is down to the difference between Moscow and Brussels — the latter is more constrained by acting within the rules, according to Kevin Limonier, a professor and deputy director at the Paris-based GEODE think tank.

“This raises an ethical and philosophical question: Can states governed by the rule of law afford to use the same tools … and the same strategies as the Russians?” he asked.

So far, countries like Germany and Romania are strengthening rules that would allow authorities to shoot down drones flying over airports and militarily sensitive objects.

National security services, meanwhile, can operate in a legal gray zone. Allies from Denmark to the Czech Republic already allow offensive cyber operations. The U.K. reportedly hacked into ISIS’s networks to obtain information on an early-stage drone program by the terrorist group in 2017.

Allies must “be more proactive on the cyber offensive,” said Braže, and focus on “increasing situational awareness — getting security and intelligence services together and coordinated.”

In practice, countries could use cyber methods to target systems critical to Russia’s war effort, like the Alabuga economic zone in Tatarstan in east-central Russia, where Moscow is producing Shahed drones, as well as energy facilities or trains carrying weapons, said Filip Bryjka, a political scientist and hybrid threat expert at the Polish Academy of Sciences. “We could attack the system and disrupt their functioning,” he said.

Europe also has to figure out how to respond to Russia’s large-scale misinformation campaigns with its own efforts inside the country.

“Russian public opinion … is somewhat inaccessible,” said one senior military official. “We need to work with allies who have a fairly detailed understanding of Russian thinking — this means that cooperation must also be established in the field of information warfare.”

Still, any new measures “need to have plausible deniability,” said one EU diplomat.

Show of force

NATO, for its part, is a defensive organization and so is leery of offensive operations. “Asymmetric responses are an important part of the conversation,” said one NATO diplomat, but “we aren’t going to stoop to the same tactics as Russia.”

Instead, the alliance should prioritize shows of force that illustrate strength and unity, said Oana Lungescu, a former NATO spokesperson and fellow with London’s Royal United Services Institute think tank. In practice, that means rapidly announcing whether Moscow is behind a hybrid attack and running ‘no-notice’ military exercises on the Russian border with Lithuania or Estonia.

Meanwhile, the NATO-backed Centre of Excellence on Hybrid Threats in Helsinki, which brings together allied officials, is also “providing expertise and training” and drafting “policies to counter those threats,” said Maarten ten Wolde, a senior analyst at the organization. 

“Undoubtedly, more should be done on hybrid,” said one senior NATO diplomat, including increasing collective attribution after attacks and making sure to “show through various means that we pay attention and can shift assets around in a flexible way.”

Jacopo Barigazzi, Nicholas Vinocur, Nette Nöstlinger, Antoaneta Roussi and Seb Starvecic contributed reporting.