From sabotage and arson to drones and dangerous encounters in the Baltic, a growing series of incidents is forcing Europe to confront a difficult question: How far can the pressure escalate before NATO responds?

WARSAW, Poland — I came to Europe because the pattern was becoming increasingly difficult to ignore. Russia’s war against Ukraine is still being fought with missiles, drones, artillery and soldiers, but another confrontation is developing farther west — one that often operates below the threshold of conventional warfare.

From here in Warsaw, the signs of that confrontation are increasingly visible.

Across Europe, authorities are dealing with sabotage, suspicious fires, attacks on infrastructure, drone incursions and increasingly dangerous encounters involving Russian military forces. Not every incident has been publicly attributed to Moscow, and it is important not to treat suspicion as proof. But some cases have already produced compelling evidence of Russian involvement, while others are being investigated against the backdrop of a broader campaign European officials have increasingly described as hybrid warfare.

One of the clearest examples is here in Warsaw.

A Shopping Center Destroyed by Fire

I visited the remains of the Marywilska 44 shopping complex, a massive commercial center that once contained roughly 1,400 shops and service businesses. In May 2024, the complex was destroyed by fire.

Polish prosecutors have since concluded that the blaze was deliberately set by members of an organized group operating on behalf of Russian intelligence. Investigators say individuals connected to the operation were instructed to record the fire and send the footage to handlers for use on Russian propaganda channels. Polish prosecutors have also linked members of the same network to other arson operations in Lithuania and attempted attacks elsewhere in the region.

Standing at that site changes the way you think about the term hybrid warfare. It sounds clinical when discussed in a television studio. On the ground, it can mean an enormous commercial complex burned to the ground and hundreds of people's livelihoods disrupted.

The objective of an operation like this does not necessarily have to be territorial conquest. Disruption itself can be the weapon.

Sabotage Brings Dutch Railways to a Halt

That concern became even more immediate this week in the Netherlands, where authorities discovered deliberately placed materials on railway tracks at approximately 30 locations.

Metal pipes were positioned across rails, causing signaling problems and major disruptions across the Dutch network. Jumper cables were also reportedly used to interfere with railway systems. Police have opened a major investigation into what authorities are treating as coordinated sabotage.

At this point, however, Dutch authorities have not publicly identified who carried out the operation or established a Russian connection. That distinction matters.

But the scale of the operation is alarming regardless of who is ultimately found responsible. Someone demonstrated the ability to interfere with a NATO country's transportation infrastructure simultaneously across dozens of locations.

The purpose of hybrid warfare is often precisely this kind of ambiguity. The aggressor does not necessarily need to send tanks across a border. Instead, infrastructure fails, transportation is disrupted, fires break out and governments are forced to spend resources investigating incidents whose perpetrators may initially be difficult to identify.

The public experiences the consequences long before anyone knows for certain who is responsible.

Pressure in the Baltic

The escalation is not confined to covert activity.

A Russian frigate in international waters off Denmark fired two flares toward a Danish military helicopter that had been sent to photograph the vessel. Danish officials said one of the flares passed close to the aircraft. Denmark subsequently summoned Russia’s ambassador, while Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen described the incident as part of a broader pattern of increasingly aggressive Russian behavior in Europe.

Russia, for its part, accused the Danish helicopter of conducting dangerous maneuvers near its ship.

At roughly the same time, NATO aircraft intercepted and destroyed an explosive-carrying drone that entered Lithuanian airspace after approaching from Belarus. The incidents are different, but together they illustrate just how crowded and dangerous the space between Russia and NATO is becoming.

This is where the danger of miscalculation becomes difficult to dismiss.

A flare narrowly misses a helicopter. A drone crosses a border. A railway is sabotaged. A fire destroys a commercial building. Each incident can be treated individually as something short of war.

But what happens when one of them kills dozens of people?

The Strategy Behind the Pressure

My assessment is that Russia is testing how much pressure it can apply without provoking a direct NATO military response.

European governments remain among Ukraine’s most important supporters. Moscow has little realistic prospect of convincing those governments through diplomacy that abandoning Ukraine is in their interests. But it may have another avenue: convince ordinary Europeans that supporting Ukraine carries an increasingly uncomfortable price.

If trains stop running, factories are disrupted, infrastructure becomes unreliable and fear begins affecting everyday life, public pressure can eventually migrate upward toward elected governments.

That is the logic behind hybrid warfare. You do not necessarily defeat your opponent's army. You attack the society supporting it.

Russia’s conventional military remains heavily committed inside Ukraine, while Ukraine continues striking Russian energy and military infrastructure far behind the front lines. The Kremlin therefore has an incentive to find other methods of imposing costs on the countries supporting Kyiv.

Whether Europe is prepared to respond effectively is becoming one of the most consequential questions of this war.

Ukraine Is Still the Center of the Conflict

None of this means the conventional war has slowed.

Russia continues launching enormous numbers of missiles and drones against Ukraine, while Ukraine continues carrying out long-range attacks against Russian military and energy infrastructure. The human cost remains staggering, particularly for civilians living near the front and in cities subjected to repeated aerial attacks.

But the significance of what is happening in Europe is that the geographic boundaries of the conflict are becoming less clear.

Former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, speaking recently in Ukraine, described the conflict as fundamentally an imperial war and argued that the West must provide Ukraine with a clearer future inside European institutions. His argument is that ambiguity about Ukraine’s future has helped prolong rather than resolve the confrontation.

Whether one agrees with that conclusion or not, Europe is already confronting consequences that extend far beyond Ukrainian territory.

Where Is the Line?

NATO was created around the principle that an attack against one member can be treated as an attack against all. That principle is relatively straightforward when the attack involves tanks, aircraft or missiles.

Hybrid warfare deliberately makes the calculation harder.

What happens when the weapon is an arsonist?

What happens when critical infrastructure is sabotaged by people working indirectly for a foreign intelligence service?

What happens when a drone crosses NATO airspace, or a Russian warship fires flares toward a NATO aircraft and the next encounter ends differently?

Those are no longer theoretical questions.

I’m in Poland because I wanted to see this developing confrontation firsthand. From Warsaw, I’ll be traveling north toward the Suwałki Gap and then toward the border with Russia’s Kaliningrad exclave — one of the most strategically sensitive pieces of territory anywhere in NATO.

Ukraine remains the battlefield where the shooting war is concentrated. But the struggle surrounding it is already reaching much farther into Europe.

The question now is not simply whether Russia is willing to keep applying pressure.

It is how much pressure Europe will tolerate before it decides the line has been crossed.

I sit down with Nate Vance for an in-depth conversation about the war in Ukraine, what he has seen and learned from the conflict, and how the reality on the ground compares with the way the war is discussed back home. We talk about the Ukrainian military, Russia’s strategy, the changing nature of modern warfare, what the fighting actually looks like on the front lines, and where this conflict may be headed. Whatever your position on Ukraine, this is a conversation about the realities of a war that continues to reshape Europe, American foreign policy, and the future of warfare.

Become a Supporter

A night of missiles and drones over Kyiv underscores the brutality of Russia’s air campaign, but on the battlefield Ukraine is showing that Moscow’s enormous expenditure of men and weapons has not delivered the victory it expected.

I’m writing this from Kharkiv after a night in Kyiv that offered a firsthand reminder of what Ukrainians have been living with for years.

Seconds after I finished my broadcast from downtown Kyiv yesterday, the air-raid sirens started again. They continued into the evening, and later the sound of explosions carried through the night. By morning, smoke was rising over parts of the city.

According to the information available to us, Russia launched roughly 200 missiles and drones against Kyiv and other areas of Ukraine during the overnight attack, with Ukrainian defenses reportedly intercepting the majority of them. Several weapons still reached Kyiv, leaving two people reported dead and others injured.

Those numbers can become abstract until you see what they mean on the ground. One piece of footage from the aftermath showed a woman emerging from a shelter with her baby after spending the night underground. For millions of Ukrainians, this is not a dramatic scene from television. It is ordinary life in a country that has been dealing with Russian missiles and drones for years.

Russia’s War Against Ukraine’s Infrastructure

Kyiv was not the only target.

Russian attacks struck locations across the country, including areas in northeastern Ukraine, where we are now traveling. One attack hit a passenger train, although passengers were reportedly evacuated before the strike and no one aboard was injured. The train appeared to have protective anti-drone barriers installed around portions of it—a remarkable illustration of how deeply the drone war has entered civilian life.

Another strike destroyed a grocery warehouse in Kyiv. These are the kinds of places that matter enormously during wartime because ordinary distribution networks are already under tremendous strain, particularly closer to the front.

We are traveling with Hope for Ukraine, a Christian humanitarian organization based in Lviv whose teams drive toward front-line communities carrying food and other essential supplies. When stores, warehouses and transportation networks are damaged, organizations like this become even more important to civilians trying to remain in their communities.

The destruction is real, and the human cost is real. But there is another side of this war that can be missed when the nightly images of explosions dominate the news.

Russia is inflicting enormous damage on Ukraine, but that does not necessarily mean Russia is winning.

Heavy Bombardment, Limited Results

From inside Kyiv, the contrast is striking.

The city remains alive. Traffic moves. Businesses operate. People go to work. Buildings damaged earlier in the war have been repaired, sometimes so completely that someone arriving today would never know they had once been struck.

That resilience matters because Russia’s air campaign appears designed not merely to destroy individual targets, but to exhaust Ukraine—to make daily life so dangerous and difficult that eventually the population loses the will to continue.

So far, I’m not seeing that happen.

Even after a major night of attacks, most of Kyiv remained standing and functioning. Ukrainians repaired damage from previous strikes and continued with their lives. The objective may be to break the population psychologically, but the people I have spoken with continue to view this as an existential fight. For them, surrender is not simply a matter of accepting unfavorable political terms. They believe the survival of Ukraine as an independent nation is at stake.

Meanwhile, Russia has paid an extraordinary price for comparatively limited territorial gains.

Ukrainian battlefield assessments claim extremely heavy Russian personnel losses during the summer and throughout the war. Those figures come from the Ukrainian side and should be treated accordingly in an active conflict, where casualty numbers are notoriously difficult to verify independently. What is clearer is that Russia has spent enormous amounts of manpower and equipment fighting for relatively small changes to the front line.

In some areas, Ukraine is now claiming to have reversed recent Russian advances. Around Lyman in eastern Ukraine, Ukrainian forces have reportedly pushed Russian positions back, part of what Kyiv describes as a broader series of battlefield gains.

That does not mean Ukraine is suddenly winning easily. Nothing about this war is easy. Ukraine faces serious shortages, particularly when it comes to the expensive interceptor missiles needed to defend its cities against Russia’s relentless aerial attacks.

But it does mean the familiar narrative that Russian victory is inevitable deserves much closer scrutiny.

Ukraine’s Air-Defense Problem

One of Ukraine’s most urgent needs remains air defense.

Russia can send large numbers of relatively inexpensive drones alongside more sophisticated missiles, forcing Ukraine to expend valuable interceptors to defend cities, infrastructure and civilians. No country can indefinitely shoot down every incoming weapon, particularly when some defensive missiles cost far more than the drones they are destroying.

Ukraine is therefore racing to develop cheaper and more sustainable ways of defeating Russian drones while continuing to depend on Western systems for the most dangerous threats.

During the broadcast, I discussed reports that the United States is preparing additional Patriot interceptors for Ukraine. If that happens, those weapons will be badly needed.

But Ukraine’s long-term survival cannot depend solely on intercepting whatever Russia launches. The country also needs the ability to impose costs on the machinery producing and launching those attacks.

Ukraine is increasingly doing exactly that, striking military and infrastructure targets deeper inside Russia and forcing Moscow to devote resources to defending territory that once seemed safely removed from the battlefield.

Peace Talks Remain Far From Peace

All of this is happening while diplomatic efforts continue.

The problem is that Russia and Ukraine remain extraordinarily far apart on what an acceptable peace would actually look like. Meetings and negotiations can create the appearance of movement, but handshakes and business proposals do not erase the fundamental questions at the heart of this war.

Former U.S. Army commander Ben Hodges was sharply critical of the latest diplomatic efforts, arguing that little meaningful progress had been made and that Russia continued attacking Ukrainian civilians even as discussions were underway.

That skepticism is understandable from where I am sitting.

This is not simply a business dispute where both sides need the right financial incentive to sign an agreement. Ukrainians see the conflict through generations of history and through what they have experienced since Russia’s invasion. Russia, meanwhile, continues to insist that its security and historical claims justify its actions.

Those positions are not going to disappear because somebody arrives with a better economic proposal.

What the War Looks Like From Here

There is a temptation when watching this war from thousands of miles away to reduce everything to maps, casualty figures, weapons systems and political arguments.

Those things matter. But they are not the whole story.

The war is also a mother carrying her baby out of a shelter after another night of explosions. It is passengers being evacuated from a train because a drone may be coming toward them. It is humanitarian workers loading vehicles with food and driving toward communities where normal supply chains have been destroyed.

And it is millions of people getting up the next morning and going back to work.

Russia can continue firing missiles and drones into Ukraine, and Ukraine will continue desperately trying to shoot them down. But after spending time here again, one thing becomes difficult to ignore: bombing a country and defeating it are not the same thing.

Russia has demonstrated that it can inflict tremendous suffering on Ukraine. What it has not demonstrated is that this suffering will convince Ukrainians to surrender.

I’m heading farther east toward Kharkiv and closer to the front, where we’ll continue reporting on what is actually happening here—not simply what politicians in Washington, Moscow or Brussels say is happening.

There is no substitute for seeing it firsthand.