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Nato is considering being “more aggressive” in responding to Russia’s cyber attacks, sabotage and airspace violations, according to the alliance’s most senior military officer.
Admiral Giuseppe Cavo Dragone told the Financial Times that the western military alliance was looking at stepping up its response to hybrid warfare from Moscow.
“We are studying everything . . . On cyber, we are kind of reactive. Being more aggressive or being proactive instead of reactive is something that we are thinking about,” said Dragone, who is chair of Nato’s military committee.
Europe has been hit by numerous hybrid war incidents — some attributed to Russia and others unclear — from the cutting of cables in the Baltic Sea to cyber attacks across the continent.
Some diplomats, especially from eastern European countries, have urged Nato to stop being merely reactive and hit back. Such a response would be easiest for cyber attacks where many countries have offensive capabilities but would be less easy for sabotage or drone intrusions.
Dragone said that a “pre-emptive strike” could be considered a “defensive action”, but added: “It is further away from our normal way of thinking and behaviour.”
He added: “Being more aggressive compared with the aggressivity of our counterpart could be an option. [The issues are] legal framework, jurisdictional framework, who is going to do this?”
Nato has had success with its Baltic Sentry mission under which ships, aircraft and naval drones have patrolled the Baltic Sea, stopping a repeat of numerous cable-cutting incidents in 2023 and 2024 by vessels linked to Russia’s shadow fleet that is designed to circumvent western sanctions.
“From the beginning of Baltic Sentry, nothing has happened. So this means that this deterrence is working,” Dragone added.
A Baltic diplomat said: “If all we do is continue being reactive, we just invite Russia to keep trying, keep hurting us. Especially when hybrid warfare is asymmetric — it costs them little, and us a lot. We need to try to be more inventive.”
Despite the success of Nato’s Baltic Sentry, there are still worries in the alliance after a Finnish court dismissed a case against the crew of the Eagle S, a shadow-fleet vessel that had cut several underwater electricity and data cables, because the ship was in international waters when the suspected sabotage took place.
Asked if that gave Russian vessels carte blanche in international waters, Finland’s foreign minister Elina Valtonen told the FT: “Yes, and that’s a problem.”
She added that being more assertive “is something which we are looking into. So far, I don’t think there has been a need for that. We also should take a step back and really analyse what the aggressor is after. Then probably, we shouldn’t be hysterical. We have our own playbook and we should trust it because it’s quite robust.”
Dragone conceded that one issue was that Nato and its members had “much more limits than our counterpart because of ethics, because of law, because of jurisdiction. It is an issue. I don’t want to say it’s a loser position, but it is a harder position than our counterpart’s.”
The head of Nato’s military committee said that the crucial test was to deter future aggression. “How deterrence is achieved — through retaliation, through pre-emptive strike — this is something we have to analyse deeply because there could be in the future even more pressure on this,” Dragone added.
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