BLUF: Ruski Ruse

Fire at an Estonian defense company, an explosion at an ammunition plant outside Rome, and a pair of drone incidents in Germany, one involving a system laden with explosives at an airport and the other spotted flying over a military base housing components for Patriot systems were all incidents that have occurred within the last month and all pointing back to one usual suspect.

According to Latvian President Edgars Rinkēvičs, who spoke with the press on Monday, Russia's hybrid war on Europe is already in full swing. In reality, it's been going on for more than a decade, and Moscow's campaign only seems to be intensifying.

Russia is no stranger to operating in the grey. Who could forget the little green men who swarmed the Crimean Peninsula back in 2014, or the Novichok poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter in the English town of Salisbury.

While the main appeal of working in the grey is deniability, Russia's track record shows the Kremlin, or at least its operatives, isn't especially concerned with whether these covert operations are eventually attributed to them or not. Take, for example, a recent story involving men working for the Wagner Group, convicted of setting fire to a London warehouse used to supply Ukraine with humanitarian aid. Or reports from Romania just today that a Russian naval drone carrying explosives was destroyed near the country’s strategic Neptun Deep offshore gas project. 

Moscow has grown more assertive in flexing its muscle and testing how far it can go in waging war on the infrastructure, supply lines, and nations supplying Ukraine's defense. With America seemingly focused on the Middle East, the possibility of a hot war getting even hotter, as some recent American intelligence assessments have indicated, may not be as far-fetched as we would all hope.

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