Why Latvia Says Russia’s Hybrid War in Europe Is Already Underway

Latvian President Edgars Rinkēvičs’s warning is about the nature of the threat, not a claim that a conventional war with NATO is about to start. European and U.S. officials have attributed a growing range of hostile activity to Russia, including sabotage, cyberattacks, political influence operations, GPS interference, damage to critical infrastructure, and airspace violations. Rinkēvičs has separately said that information shared by Latvia, Lithuania, and other NATO members shows attempts to conduct sabotage and undermine security in the region.

The strongest conclusion supported by the available evidence is that Europe is confronting a persistent gray-zone campaign while trying to prevent it from becoming a larger military crisis.

What “hybrid war” means in this context

Hybrid warfare combines covert or deniable activity with political pressure and, potentially, conventional military force. The aim is to impose costs and create uncertainty without necessarily crossing the threshold that would trigger a unified military response.

A Congressional Research Service review says U.S. and European officials have attributed sustained and increasingly serious activity to Russia since its 2022 invasion of Ukraine. The reported categories include sabotage, assassinations, political interference and influence operations, cyberattacks, GPS jamming, damage to underwater infrastructure, weaponized migration, and airspace violations.

That list explains why incidents that might look unrelated in isolation—such as a cyber operation, a suspicious infrastructure failure, a disinformation campaign, or an unexplained drone sighting—are being assessed as part of a broader security problem. Attribution remains difficult in many cases, so “attributed to Russia” does not mean every incident has been publicly proven in court or conclusively identified.

Why drones and air defense are central concerns

Drones are relatively inexpensive, adaptable, and difficult to detect and defeat when they operate at low altitude. European military officials have warned that Russian drone activity can also serve as a way to probe air-defense systems and identify weaknesses.

The concern is therefore wider than whether a particular drone crossed a border. Repeated incursions or suspected reconnaissance can reveal gaps in surveillance, low-altitude detection, response times, and counter-drone coverage. Reports on Europe’s eastern and northern airspace have similarly highlighted weaknesses in air defense and the need to strengthen deterrence and protection.

The available sources do not substantiate the more specific claim that Russia will use “Ukrainian drones” against European critical infrastructure. That scenario may appear in reporting about possible provocations, but it should be treated as an unverified contingency rather than established evidence.

The important caveat: hybrid escalation is not an imminent invasion

Rinkēvičs has distinguished between Russia’s ability to conduct smaller operations and its ability to launch a full-scale invasion of NATO’s eastern flank. In an interview reported by TVP World, he said Russia did not currently have the military capability for such an invasion, while retaining the capacity for small- or medium-scale operations.

That distinction matters. Public reporting supports concern about sabotage, cyber pressure, disinformation, and limited provocations. It does not demonstrate a current Russian decision to invade the Baltic states or show that a major conventional attack is imminent.

The more immediate strategic risk is a limited, deniable action designed to create disagreement inside NATO: an operation serious enough to test the alliance, but ambiguous enough to complicate a collective response.

Why U.S. intelligence assessments have intensified regional alarm

Recent reporting based on U.S. intelligence assessments says Vladimir Putin could try to test NATO’s resolve within the next several years. The scenarios reportedly range from a cyberattack to a small-scale land incursion, with the purpose of challenging alliance unity and its commitment to Article 5.

Other reports place the possible period between fall 2026 and 2029 and identify the Baltic states and Poland as the most plausible arena for such a test. These are assessments of possible scenarios based on classified information, not forecasts that an attack will happen within that period.

Even so, the logic is alarming for countries on NATO’s eastern flank. A limited action against critical infrastructure, territory, communications, or transport could be intended to force allies to decide how far they are willing to go in response. That makes resilience and rapid coordination part of deterrence: the harder it is to create confusion or exploit national differences, the less attractive a limited test becomes.

Why Lithuania is revisiting Kaliningrad transit rules

Lithuania’s facilitated-transit system for travel between Russia and the Kaliningrad region dates to EU arrangements adopted in 2003. The framework uses Facilitated Transit Documents and related documents, with the established maximum duration for certain road transit set at 24 hours.

Lithuanian Seimas member and former defense minister Arvydas Anušauskas has proposed changing Lithuanian border law to reduce the permitted transit period for Russian citizens to six hours. He argues that the change would strengthen enforcement without unilaterally rewriting the EU framework; exceptional circumstances such as accidents, vehicle breakdowns, queues, or extreme weather would remain relevant under the existing rules.

The proposal comes amid reported growth in both traffic and violations. Nearly 13,000 Russian-registered passenger cars reportedly used simplified transit documents in 2025, while documented violations rose from 360 in 2024 to 1,493 in 2025.

Those numbers support the argument that a shorter window and automated monitoring could make unauthorized stops or deviations easier to detect. They do not, by themselves, establish that transit users are conducting espionage or sabotage. The security case is about reducing exposure and improving oversight, not treating every traveler as an intelligence operative.

The regional policy response

For Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, and Poland, the practical response is collective risk reduction rather than predictions of inevitable war. Priorities include:

• integrating air-defense and counter-drone systems;
• improving monitoring of borders, transport routes, and Kaliningrad-related transit;
• protecting energy, communications, ports, railways, and other critical infrastructure;
• sharing intelligence quickly across national agencies and NATO; and
• coordinating national restrictions through the EU so that one country’s rules do not create an exploitable weak link.

NATO and European governments have also been looking for ways to involve civilian infrastructure operators and cybersecurity providers in responding to hybrid threats.

Rinkēvičs’s warning is therefore best read as a call to recognize an existing security contest before it reaches the conventional-war threshold. The evidence points to persistent hostile activity and serious vulnerabilities, while the evidence for an imminent full-scale invasion remains absent from the public record. The central challenge is to strengthen defenses and alliance cohesion without turning contingent intelligence scenarios into claims of certainty.