The EU Is Secretly Preparing for a Deadly Hybrid Attack: "Sooner or Later There Will Be Victims"

Ambassadors from all 27 EU member states have spent recent weeks meeting in a "restricted format" - no mobile phones, no aides. The topic is a nightmare scenario: a major hybrid attack in which several EU citizens are killed. According to five European diplomats and officials who spoke to Politico on condition of anonymity, that scenario is becoming more and more likely.

The talks intensified after a drone carrying explosives was found at Leipzig airport in August. "We have to be prepared for something serious. Unfortunately, Leipzig showed us that a very serious incident, something that would cause multiple casualties, is not unthinkable," a senior European diplomat admitted. Another official is even more direct: "Given the scale of Russian activity, sooner or later there will certainly be victims. It's sheer luck that there haven't been any so far."

Hybrid war every day

The EU receives reports almost daily of so-called hybrid attacks - sabotage, cyberattacks and covert operations that stay below the threshold of an open act of war. The list is long: the drone in Leipzig, the suspicious fire at the Polish ground station that handles Starlink communications, the plot to plant incendiary devices at transport hubs across the EU and Britain. And most recently - the cargo ship sunk by drones in Bulgaria's economic zone in the Black Sea, whose sailors are listed as missing.

"It's fairly obvious that, as Russia uses increasingly lethal means to test our preparedness, at some point there will be casualties," says Teija Tiilikainen, director of the European Centre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats. A NATO diplomat admits that if citizens of an allied country are killed, the pressure to act will be enormous.

Who decides when it happens?

This is where the problems begin. Some capitals think the Union is overstepping its mandate and duplicating the work of NATO, the alliance that has been the foundation of European security for almost eight decades. "If there is confusion or duplication, it can slow down decision-making, and time is always critical," warned Oana Lungescu, a former NATO spokesperson. Ursula von der Leyen, meanwhile, is pushing an "emergency security protocol" and a European Security Council, which are due to feature in the European Security Strategy at the start of November. Some diplomats respond that the mechanisms already exist and that the integrated political crisis response worked well during the pandemic too.

There's a worse problem - trust. Several diplomats complain that the EU has no secure communication channels. Reports that a former Hungarian foreign minister passed on the content of leaders' conversations to his Russian counterpart have led some capitals to keep the most sensitive information only within NATO. "It either ends up in the media or goes straight to Moscow," says a diplomat from an eastern-flank country.

So the Union is preparing for an attack it considers inevitable, yet it still hasn't agreed who picks up the phone when it happens, or whether everything that's known can be said at the table. The Balkans, with a ship sunk in Bulgarian waters, are much closer to that table than it seems. Does any government in the region even have a plan like this - or will it wait for the first victim before writing one?