A factory building drones in Latvia, a military base in Estonia and a visit to Poland’s border with Belarus were all carefully chosen stops on Ursula von der Leyen’s recent four-day trip around the European Union’s eastern flank.
The reason behind the European Commission president’s visit to the union’s so-called “front-line states” was underlined by the incident involving her aeroplane in Bulgaria.
The head of the EU’s executive arm, which has taken on a leading role in pushing for Europe to be able to better defend itself, was flying on a charter plane from Poland to Plovdiv.
The Bulgarian airport was hit by electronic jamming that knocked out the GPS navigation aids of all planes in the air, forcing the commission president’s aircraft to circle for about an hour before the pilot could safely land.
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Bulgarian authorities told the EU body that they strongly suspected Russia was behind the interference operation. It is understood this belief was based on an assessment that few other foreign powers would have the capabilities to carry out such interference. There has also been a pattern of previous incidents tied back to Moscow.
Finland, the Baltic States and Poland have all complained about increased instances of Kremlin-backed GPS jamming, affecting civilian aeroplanes and ships, since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
The interference is just one way Russia is suspected of trying to sow unease and disruption inside nearby EU states. There has also been sabotage and cyberattacks.
“The eastern flank of the EU has become a testing ground for increasingly active use of hybrid warfare tactics of Russia and its allies,” the interior ministers of Lithuania, Poland, Finland, Latvia and Estonia wrote in an August 29th letter to the commission.
Russian president Vladimir Putin has also been accused of using migrants as a weapon to put pressure on European governments.
Poland’s prime minister Donald Tusk brought von der Leyen to his country’s militarised border with Belarus, which he called the “barrier that protects Poland and Europe from the hybrid war declared by Belarus and Russia”.
Putin and his ally, Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko, have been accused of weaponising migration, with operatives flying in asylum seekers and migrants from other parts of the world, and then organising their transport to EU borders. Moscow’s alleged rationale is that these artificially increased migrant numbers will boost the electoral chances of anti-immigration, far-right forces in Europe.
“Putin is a predator ... We know by experience that he can only be kept in check by strong deterrence,” von der Leyen said during her stop in Poland.
The intention of the four-day trip was to underline the rationale for European countries increasing the amount spent on defence and security.
How are those attempts to spend more on defence getting on? The main element of the commission’s “rearm Europe” plan, a €150 billion loan scheme to fund increased defence spending in member states, is fully subscribed.
Estonia, the small Baltic state that shares a border with Russia, intends to borrow €3.6 billion of those cheap EU-backed loans to help expand its defences. Things feel a lot more urgent and existential the farther east you go.
Nineteen of the 27 states, including Ireland, have put their hands up to club together when buying new military equipment or hardware, to save costs.
A summit of EU leaders next month will discuss how to make sure all this money is spent plugging the most serious gaps in the union’s defences.
Ultimately, how great a threat Russia poses to the rest of Europe depends on what happens in the Ukraine war.
European leaders in the “coalition of the willing” group will on Thursday again debate how to assure Ukraine’s long-term security in the event of a possible settlement ending the fighting.
French president Emmanuel Macron is hosting the discussion in Paris, with some leaders attending in person and others tuning in virtually.
A hobbled Ukraine forced to give up strategic territory in the east – which it has successfully stopped Russian forces from taking – would make the country vulnerable to another attack. The fear is Putin would use a truce to regroup and prepare to try again in a few years.
That is why Kyiv is so keen on finding some way to get the US to buy in to guaranteeing Ukraine’s future security. It wants to join the Nato military alliance, where an attack on one is viewed as an attack on all. The Trump administration has said those aspirations are a non-starter.
Momentum for peace talks between Putin and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy has stalled. Russia has shown no interest in a ceasefire. This is despite Ukraine signalling some openness to possible concessions, albeit under pressure from the White House.
The coalition of the willing is refining its idea of having some type of European military force posted near to, or on the ground in, Ukraine, following a truce. The deployment would hopefully be supported by a US “backstop”, von der Leyen recently said.
This will all remain very hypothetical until Russia comes to the negotiating table and peace talks actually go somewhere.
