UNITED NATIONS: Russia is intensifying sabotage, cyberattacks and other hybrid attacks across Europe to undermine support for Ukraine, European ministers said, while dismissing concerns \u200bthat Moscow is capable of launching a direct assault on NATO.<\/p>\n
Speaking on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly this week, officials from countries on NATO\u2019s eastern flank said Moscow was increasingly using drone incursions, cyberattacks, sabotage and other covert operations to sow fear, test Western resolve and weaken backing for Kyiv.<\/p>\n
\u201cEurope faces a fast proliferation of sabotage attacks and airspace violations,\u201d EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas told reporters. \u201cMoscow is trying to scare Europe into winding down its support for Ukraine.\u201d<\/p>\n
European governments increasingly see Russia\u2019s most immediate threat not as a conventional military attack, but as a campaign of covert and deniable actions aimed at unsettling Ukraine\u2019s allies and eroding Western unity as the war drags on.<\/p>\n
Kallas said Russia appeared willing to take \u200cgreater risks and argued \u200cthe answer was to increase pressure on Moscow through tougher sanctions, including measures \u200btargeting \u200cits \u201cshadow fleet\u201d \u2060and military-industrial \u200bcomplex.<\/p>\n
\u201cRussia\u2019s \u2060economy is one of its weakest parts, and we need to increase the pressure on it so that they would stop this war,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said such activity was no longer merely a threat.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re not just threats; they\u2019re actual attacks,\u201d Sikorski told Reuters, citing arson, explosions, drone incursions and what Warsaw says was a deliberate cruise missile violation of its territory.<\/p>\n
The Polish Army Operational Command said on Wednesday a Russian military Mi-8 helicopter made a brief incursion into its airspace from the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur F-16s are scrambled up almost every day now because you just never know when these drones or missiles that \u2060approach might not actually be possible,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Romanian Foreign Minister Oana Toiu told Reuters Bucharest had \u200cseen more than 100 incursions by drones or drone fragments onto its \u200cterritory as Russia intensified attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure near the Danube and Black \u200bSea.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe do not have data to indicate we\u2019re targeted \u200cdirectly, but that doesn\u2019t change the responsibility of Russia for the risk it creates,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Romania has responded by closing \u200cRussia\u2019s consulate in Constanta and coordinating diplomatic measures with European allies, she added.<\/p>\n
The Kremlin consistently denies conducting sabotage operations in NATO countries or plotting any confrontation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
UNITED NATIONS: Russia is intensifying sabotage, cyberattacks and other hybrid attacks across Europe to undermine support for Ukraine, European ministers said, while dismissing concerns \u200bthat Moscow is capable of launching a direct assault on NATO. Speaking on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly this week, officials from countries on NATO\u2019s eastern flank said Moscow …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":103421,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-103408","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103408","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103408"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103408\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":103422,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103408\/revisions\/103422"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/103421"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}