STRASBOURG: EU chief Ursula von der Leyen on Wednesday said Europe must ramp up its defenses to deter Russia\u2019s \u201chybrid warfare,\u201d after a catalogue of air incursions, cyberattacks and damage to undersea cables.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese incidents are calculated to linger in the twilight of deniability. This is not random harassment. It is a coherent and escalating campaign,\u201d the European Commission head said in a speech to EU lawmakers.<\/p>\n
\u201cTwo incidents are coincidence, but three, five, 10 \u2014 this is a deliberate and targeted grey zone campaign against Europe, and Europe must respond,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
EU countries Poland, Estonia and Romania have recently been rattled by Russian air incursions, while unidentified drones have been spotted in Denmark, Germany and Belgium.<\/p>\n
European countries have already increased defense spending to post-Cold War highs in the face of Moscow\u2019s war in Ukraine and doubts over US support under President Donald Trump.<\/p>\n
Now the EU is seeking to hammer out plans for joint projects that could be built by the 27-nation bloc \u2014 including a \u201cwall\u201d of anti-drone defenses.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe must not only react. We must deter because if we hesitate to act, the grey zone will only expand,\u201d von der Leyen said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe founding mission of the European Union is to preserve peace, and today that means having the capacity to deter aggression and provocation.\u201d<\/p>\n
EU leaders will seek at a summit in Brussels later this month to agree on a \u201croad map\u201d aimed at getting the bloc ready to ward off threats from Russia in the coming years.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis will not only set common objectives, but also very concrete milestones and timelines on the way to 2030 because we all know only what gets measured gets really done,\u201d von der Leyen said.<\/p>\n
The commission president insisted that tackling \u201cRussia\u2019s hybrid war\u201d requires \u201ca completely new mindset for all of us.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe choice before us is very simple. We either can shy away and watch Russian threats escalate, or we meet them with unity, deterrence and resolve,\u201d von der Leyen said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
STRASBOURG: EU chief Ursula von der Leyen on Wednesday said Europe must ramp up its defenses to deter Russia\u2019s \u201chybrid warfare,\u201d after a catalogue of air incursions, cyberattacks and damage to undersea cables. \u201cThese incidents are calculated to linger in the twilight of deniability. This is not random harassment. It is a coherent and escalating …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":87854,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-87843","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\/87843","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=87843"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87843\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":87856,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87843\/revisions\/87856"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87854"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87843"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87843"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87843"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}