Russia steps up hybrid attacks on European airspace, EU's Kallas warns

Three Russian drones crossed into Moldovan airspace on September 30, according to the Moldovan defence ministry, the same day Moscow launched its heaviest combined missile-and-drone campaign against Ukrainian energy infrastructure in months.

EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas told reporters in Brussels on October 5 that Europe has absorbed a clear escalation in Russian hybrid activity. "Europe has seen a spike in the Russian hybrid attacks and sabotage attempts and airspace violations in recent weeks. Russian missiles and drones violated Moldovan airspace again over the weekend. And this is completely unacceptable," she said at a joint briefing with Moldovan Prime Minister Vasile Tofan.

What are the aviation-specific risks?

The most direct civil aviation impact to date came in August, when German authorities accused Moscow of orchestrating an attempted drone attack at Leipzig airport, a facility that handles scheduled passenger and cargo services in central Germany. The incident forced a temporary operational review and underscored the vulnerability of inland European airports to long-range drone incursions.

Moldovan airspace violations add a second layer of risk. Chisinau's defence ministry recorded three drone penetrations on September 30, the same date Russia struck power facilities and infrastructure around Kyiv and other Ukrainian regions in what Western officials described as preparation for the harshest winter Ukraine has faced since the February 2022 invasion. Kallas, speaking four days later, referenced further violations "over the weekend."

How is Germany responding?

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said last week that his government expects more hybrid attacks from Russia, pledging continued military and financial support for Kyiv through the coming winter. German authorities have repeatedly warned that Moscow is conducting a hybrid campaign of drone and cyber operations, and have publicly linked the Kremlin to the Leipzig incident.

Merz's framing tracks assessments from NATO allies that Russia is probing European critical infrastructure — airports, rail nodes, undersea cables, power stations — using drones, sabotage proxies and digital intrusion in parallel. The targeting pattern has shifted from testing response times and ATC coordination to probing insurance and liability frameworks that govern hybrid-warfare losses.

What is the Russian position?

Moscow has rejected the accusations. Russian officials have dismissed intelligence linking the Kremlin to the Leipzig drone strike and to Moldovan airspace breaches, describing the claims as politically motivated. The denial leaves European regulators with a verification problem: drone incursions leave limited forensic evidence, and attribution often rests on signals intelligence shared among allies rather than independently verifiable data.

What it means for operators

For airlines, lessors and cargo operators, the pattern carries direct operational and insurance consequences. Overflight planning for routes crossing the Black Sea region, Moldova and parts of the Baltic already incorporates higher fuel reserves and risk surcharges following earlier GPS jamming and spoofing incidents that disrupted commercial navigation.

Direct drone incursions at European airports and repeated airspace violations by Russian military assets now raise the prospect of temporary closures, increased ATC coordination overhead and renewed scrutiny of war-risk insurance coverage. Lessors with aircraft transiting Eastern European airspace face higher re-routing costs and longer ferry times, while operators with Moldovan or Ukrainian overflight in their networks must re-evaluate contingency routings through Romanian and Hungarian airspace.

EU and NATO defense ministers are expected to review the hybrid threat at scheduled meetings in the coming weeks. Kallas's framing — that hybrid attacks now include direct airspace violations by Russian military assets — sets a higher diplomatic threshold for any future European response, particularly if a future incident results in a commercial aviation casualty.