Brussels, Sept. 17 — The European Union’s top defence official says the bloc is preparing to make Russia pay a real price for a wave of so-called hybrid provocations, as Brussels moves to operationalise a new emergency security mechanism unveiled earlier this week.
European Commissioner for Defence Andrius Kubilius said the EU was developing counter-hybrid capabilities designed to ensure Russia “will pay” a significant cost for actions that fall short of open military aggression but have unsettled the bloc’s eastern flank in recent months, including reported drone incursions, suspected sabotage of infrastructure and what officials describe as weaponised migration.
His comments follow European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s announcement of an “Emergency Security Protocol” during her State of the Union address, a mechanism intended to let member states convene rapidly and coordinate a collective European response whenever one country comes under this kind of pressure. Officials say the protocol is meant to close a gap in the bloc’s defences, given that so-called grey-zone incidents typically fall below the threshold that would trigger a traditional military or NATO response.
Von der Leyen has also floated the creation of a European Security Council, a proposed forum bringing together EU leaders alongside Ukraine, Britain, Norway and Canada to coordinate on continental security threats, reflecting growing alarm in Brussels over the scale and frequency of incidents attributed to Russia.
The push comes as European officials increasingly describe the situation along the bloc’s eastern border as a sustained campaign rather than a series of isolated events, with reported incidents ranging from airspace violations to attacks on undersea cables and other critical infrastructure. Moscow has consistently denied direct involvement in such incidents.
It remains unclear exactly what shape the “painful” response Kubilius described might take in practice, or how quickly the new protocol could be activated in a real crisis. For now, the announcement signals a harder line from Brussels, as the bloc tries to show it can respond decisively to threats designed specifically to stay below the threshold of open conflict — even as questions remain over how unified the EU’s 27 member states will be once a real test arrives.