Anna Linford Our earlier piece described Europe's response to Russia's summer of drone incursions, cable sabotage and DDoS waves as deliberate silence — no military reply, just a slow squeeze via frozen assets. Two developments now test whether that restraint is becoming deterrence: a fresh cyberattack wave on Norway, and a German lawmaker's public call to threaten Russia with a weapon Berlin has withheld.
A pro-Russian group calling itself Server Killers claimed responsibility for denial-of-service attacks on Norway's digital government services, including the single sign-on portal citizens use to access public agencies run by Digdir, Norway's Digitalisation Agency, according to Ukrainska Pravda. The group, active since 2023 and previously linked to attacks on Romanian and Canadian sites this month, said it targeted Norway because Oslo signed a strategic partnership with Kyiv and pledged a third consecutive year of aid — 85 billion kroner, or $9.2 billion — announced by Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre during a visit to Kyiv.
Berlin formally blamed Russia for the Leipzig drone and said it will close Russia's consulate in Bonn and end the lease of a Russian cultural centre in Berlin, according to Diari ARA. Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt called Germany "the daily target of hybrid warfare" — espionage, sabotage and cyberattacks he described as "a constant reality." Sanctions against roughly 1,600 Russian individuals and companies are under review, per the same report.
The escalation, event by event
- Late May 2026A Russian drone injures two people in Galați, Romania.
- Early August 2026An explosive-laden drone is found near a cargo plane at Leipzig airport.
- 24–26 August 2026Server Killers hit Norway's Digdir with what the agency calls its biggest-ever attack.
- 1 September 2026Berlin formally blames Russia for Leipzig and orders consulate and cultural-centre closures; FDP leader Wolfgang Kubicki urges threatening Russia with Taurus missiles.
The sharpest note came from Wolfgang Kubicki, leader of Germany's Free Democrats: he argued Berlin should summon Russia's ambassador and warn that continued sabotage will trigger delivery of the long-range Taurus missile Chancellor Friedrich Merz has withheld from Ukraine, according to RBC-Ukraine. It is the first public proposal from a German politician to convert hybrid-war anger into a specific military-supply threat rather than a diplomatic gesture.
HYPOTHESIS: Kubicki's intervention signals that patience with symbolic measures is thinning in German politics, not only among hawks in government. Supporting this: it follows Merz's own vow that those behind hybrid attacks would "pay a price," per Diari ARA — Kubicki is pushing the chancellor to specify what that price is. Against it: the FDP holds no Bundestag seats after its 2025 election defeat, per RBC-Ukraine, so Kubicki speaks with no vote and no veto — and Merz said in March that he sees no added value in sending Taurus.
That gap between rhetoric and mandate runs across the continent. Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said flatly that "there is a hybrid war" spreading country to country — "one day it's Poland ... next week it will probably be somewhere else" — per Diari ARA. French President Emmanuel Macron urged holding the line without tipping into confrontation, saying Europe must "be strong to deter any aggressions, but ... remain very cautious and avoid any escalation."
Measured against our earlier framework, the diplomatic and financial track is moving; deterrence is not yet proven — Server Killers hit Norway regardless of Berlin's warnings, and its stated goal of punishing Ukraine aid went unaffected. Watch whether Germany's governing coalition, not just its FDP opposition, starts using language like Kubicki's, and whether the sanctions list clears the EU's unanimity requirement in the coming weeks.
