The discovery of an explosives-laden drone in Leipzig airport cargo operations area and Wednesday’s Russian attacks on Kyiv, which killed 17 people, have each served to underline critical weaknesses in European and Ukrainian air defences.
Nato has promised to replenish Kyiv’s anti-missile stocks as soon as possible, as Russia’s new ballistic missile swarms expose Ukrainian vulnerabilities. Ukraine shot down 98 of 115 drones in the attack, but not a single missile was downed.
The shortage of Patriot ground-to-air missile batteries is particularly severe, with supplies from the US hit by depletion of stocks in the Gulf war. European production is increasing, but it will be months before adequate supplies are available. Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskiy has warned of a surge in Russian production.
Russia has also been implicated in the recent string of drone incursions into Nato territories, of which the Leipzig incident, the first time a drone with explosives has been found in Europe so far from the Ukrainian border, is particularly alarming. The airport is a civilian transit centre and a Nato and German logistics hub and this testing of Nato defences has serious implications for international airline security.
RM Block
Russian incursions are clearly not accidental but a new escalation of hybrid warfare, whether surveillance or sabotage, is a systematic testing of preparedness carried out with impunity.
Over the weekend Romania, which has faced dozens of incursions, shot down a third drone in as many days over the Black Sea. Lithuania, whose sovereignty has been repeatedly violated, reports intelligence suggesting the Russians are preparing “false flag” attacks on the Baltic states using repurposed Ukrainian drones. Drones have been sighted surveilling military air bases in the UK, France, Belgium and the Netherlands.
EU cooperation in response to the threat to provide an effective barrier on its common borders has been stepped up in recent months in the form of the European Drone Defence Initiative. That important work must be prioritised.
