Europe is grappling with the growing challenge of hybrid warfare. The number of drone sightings across Europe surged in 2025, with the most significant incident occurring at Copenhagen Airport in September, where hours-long closures affected over 20,000 passengers. While drone incursions have occurred over the years, this recent surge has been notably more persistent and far more disruptive. These intensified disruptions go beyond being mere battlefield tactics and increasingly function as strategic instruments aimed at exploiting structural vulnerabilities within the bloc.
The Drone Incursions As Russia’s Strategic Signalling
The recent intrusion of drones against Europe has been widely considered as a form of Hybrid Warfare, where Russia is aiming to achieve its strategic goals while not crossing the level of a confrontation.
The compact structure, low-flying feature, and anonymous characteristics of the drones create a challenge in conclusively establishing Russian involvement. This uncertainty allows Moscow to dodge direct accountability.
The continuous drone incursions over airports, military bases, and important infrastructure have been successful in instilling fear, concern, and doubt in European authorities’ security capabilities. According to an EU-wide survey, 68% of EU citizens want their authorities to be more involved in protecting the people against international uncertainty and security risks.
Drone sightings across northern Europe caused psychological discomfort even to the ordinary citizens living in the non-combat zones. In Norway, locating an unusual drone near their home unnerved a family, especially after learning about the airport breaches in the news the next day. Similarly, the Copenhagen airport closure due to drone sightings worried the public, prompting the Prime Minister to call the incidents an act of “Hybrid War”. While these incursions have caused limited physical damage, they have surely disrupted the daily routines of the locals and increased a sense of vulnerability. Experts have noted that drones can make people feel watched, unsettled and psychologically vulnerable.
Additionally, these intrusions lead to mounting economic burden on Europe’s air-defence system. The Russian Gerbera drones that invaded Poland’s airspace in September 2025 used wood and foam, whereas the bloc shot down these drones using multi-million dollar weapons systems with French Rafales, Danish F-16s and German Eurofighters. This disparity exposes NATO countries’ huge gap in air defence capabilities. The “cost-to-kill” ratio is not feasible for sustained warfare as large-scale, cheap drone incursions can quickly deplete the expensive European missile stockpiles.
Drone incursions over the European airspace can also be an attempt to divert Europe’s focus inward and persuade the nations to prioritise infrastructure protection over military and financial backing for Ukraine. Estonian prime minister, Kirsten Michal warned of the same, highlighting that Russia’s air incursions were an attempt to distract Europe’s assistance to Ukraine. “Putin wants to have us talking about ourselves, not about Ukraine, not about helping Ukraine, not to push back Russia in Ukraine”, Michal revealed in an interview in Copenhagen. similarly, while addressing the German Bundeswehr Conference 2025, German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius, suggested that the drone sightings over Belgium were probably due to discussions over the use of Russia’s frozen assets and that it continues to “sow doubt, divide us and influence elections”.
Ambiguity Becoming Leverage
There are disagreements across Europe on how to respond to Russia’s aggression, reflecting the strategic thought and threat perception gaps within the bloc. Belgium rejected the EU’s plan to utilise frozen Russian assets for Ukraine, arguing that it could violate international laws. Moreover, the formation of the new government in December 2025 led to political shifts within the capital of Prague, where the Czech Prime Minister joined Hungary and Slovakia in refusing to provide financial guarantees for a new package of aid to Ukraine. These disagreements and slow decision-making dilute a robust response.
This lack of unified response plays into Russia’s strategic hands. It allows Moscow to calibrate pressure while avoiding any forceful response. The absence of consensus provides Russia with a fragmented set of calculations that can be exploited over time.
Through persistent drone incursions, cyber activities, and subtle provocations, Russia navigates through the grey space between war and peace, prompting European governments to engage in debates over intentions, responses, and the possible risks. Any prolonged discussions, be it about air-defence supplies or the handling of frozen Russian assets, delay decision-making and diminish political attention. Hybrid warfare works best in this very uncertainty, transforming hesitation into a strategic advantage and enabling Russia to influence European actions by maintaining a constant sense of threat.
Way Forward
Hybrid threats go beyond the use of tactics alone; they also rely on economic and logistical backbones that keep them cheap, repeatable, and hard to trace. Russia uses various campaigns against Europe, like airspace incursions and information manipulation, which exploit the gaps in resilience and avoid triggering a military response. Hence, Europe needs to go beyond conventional deterrence and defence postures to overcome a system that sustains these kinds of threats. A more effective approach would be to target the supply chains and economic enablers behind hybrid capabilities. For instance, stricter export rules and sanctions not just on finished drones but on the dual-use components, software, and logistics networks that allow low-cost unmanned systems to proliferate in the grey zone. The EU has already expanded controls on dual-use goods such as drone components, semiconductors, and electronics to limit Russia’s access to sensitive technologies. Therefore, disrupting these pathways through sanctions, enhanced customs scrutiny and coordinated trade restrictions can turn the cheap tactic into a strategic burden.
Going further, hybrid threats are successful because they interrupt everyday life rather than attacking the armies directly. They aim to create a constant sense of uncertainty for ordinary people. Some assessments have repeatedly warned that Russia’s grey-zone tactics are meant to strain societies and expose weaknesses in civil resilience, which is why responding to these threats cannot be left to the military alone. Protecting transport systems, power grids, and public services, and ensuring civilian authorities are part of security planning and has become just as important as traditional defence in countering hybrid warfare.
