Russia has flown drones into Poland and Romania, sent fighter jets into Estonian airspace, buzzed a German Navy frigate in the Baltic Sea and backed an aggressive shadow campaign to sway this weekend’s election in Moldova.
And that’s just in the past three weeks.
The frenzy of Russian action has prompted alarm in European capitals, where officials are worried that Moscow is stepping up its antagonism of Europe, as U.S. resolve to counter Russia recedes under President Trump.
The European jitters extended to Scandinavia this week. Airports in Denmark and Norway shut down because of unexplained drone activity. Denmark’s prime minister said she couldn’t rule out Russia as the culprit. The Kremlin denied involvement and dismissed European concerns about the other recent episodes as “exalted hysteria.”
But perhaps no country in Europe, apart from Ukraine, is feeling the specter of Russian power at the moment more acutely than Moldova.
A parliamentary election there on Sunday could decide whether Moldova, a nation of 2.4 million and a former Soviet republic, continues its path to the European Union under President Maia Sandu or slips back into Moscow’s orbit. Russia has taken aim at Ms. Sandu’s pro-Europe party, unleashing a barrage of influence operations to undermine her government that has intensified with the approach of the vote.
Ms. Sandu hit back in a dramatic speech this week after the Moldovan authorities detained 74 people and claimed to have disrupted a plot to incite unrest coordinated by criminal elements from Russia.
“The Kremlin believes we are all for sale, that we are too small to resist, that we are not a country but a territory,” President Sandu told Moldovans on Monday. “But Moldova is our home, and our home is not for sale.”
The Kremlin spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, responded by accusing her of suppressing the votes of Moldovans who want closer relations with Moscow.
Experts viewed the spate of Russian moves as provocations to probe for potential weaknesses and assess Europe’s responses.
“There does seem to be a feeling that something has shifted,” said Eric Rubin, a senior fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis in Washington and former U.S. ambassador to Bulgaria. “I would suspect that this is a testing phase.”
A Trying Moment for NATO
Last week, days after the drone incursion into Poland, Italian F-35 fighter pilots scrambled over the Gulf of Finland to intercept Russian MiG-31 warplanes that made a 12-minute incursion into Estonian airspace. The Italians got close enough to see the Russian pilots wave.
The Russian jets, which had disabled their radio transponder devices, were intercepted as soon as they entered Estonia’s air space, said Col. Gaetano Farina, the Italian commander of the NATO task force patrolling the airspace. The two Italian jets rocked their wings, an internationally known maneuver to signal that they were intercepting the Russians. He said the Russian pilots then allowed the Italian planes to escort them back into international airspace and over the Russian border in Kaliningrad.
While the Russian fighters were in Estonia’s airspace — about five miles deep, at one point — the Italian pilots assessed what weapons the Russian jets were carrying, Colonel Farina said. He said they were air-to-air missiles, not bombs, a distinction that Estonian officials have said led them to conclude that an attack on the country’s population was highly unlikely.
Russia has denied that it left international airspace, infuriating Estonian officials, who have warned that Russia’s invasion might not stop at Ukraine. Estonia shares a 183-mile border with Russia.
Already, faint fault lines have begun to emerge in Europe over how to respond to Russia.
This week, Radosław Sikorski, Poland’s foreign minister, threatened military action against any Russian aircraft that strayed into Polish airspace in the future.
Germany’s defense minister, Boris Pistorius, however, said shooting down Russian planes would be unhelpful and warned fellow NATO countries not to fall into a Russian “escalation trap” set by President Vladimir V. Putin.
“Prudence is not cowardice, but rather responsibility toward your own country and toward peace in Europe,” Mr. Pistorius said.
The nervousness in Europe stems in part from questions about whether the United States, the guarantor of Western Europe’s security since World War II, would respond to a Russian attack under Mr. Trump, a longtime skeptic of NATO.
Mr. Trump lifted the spirits of European leaders this week by calling Mr. Putin’s forces a “paper tiger” and saying Ukraine could take back its territory with Europe’s help.
Mr. Trump also said NATO countries should down Russian aircraft that violate their airspace. But when pressed on whether he would back a NATO member that did so, he said, “That depends on the circumstances.”
European allies want more unwavering support than that.
Žygimantas Pavilionis, Lithuania’s former ambassador to the United States and now a member of his country’s Parliament, said Mr. Trump’s warm welcome of Mr. Putin during a summit in Alaska last month led only to escalation from Moscow, with increased missile attacks on Ukraine and now incursions into NATO territory.
“I always defend America,” he said. “But I need some action from my beloved America.”
Moldova Crossroads
In Moldova, Ms. Sandu’s pro-Western political movement has prioritized accelerating the nation’s path to the European Union, holding a referendum that approved E.U. membership last year and pressing through reforms to qualify for it.
Ms. Sandu, a graduate of Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, has angered Moscow with her pro-Europe stance and aggressive moves to end the Kremlin’s longstanding influence in Moldova.
Russia sees the elections as an opportunity to damage one of the most pro-Western leaders in what the Kremlin views as its rightful sphere of influence, analysts said. The small nation has become the latest, most active front in Russia’s yearslong effort to denigrate Western democracy and promote Moscow-friendly leaders. Moscow operated similar online influence campaigns during recent elections in Germany and France.
Though President Sandu is not on the ballot, her party risks losing its majority. That would deal a blow to the E.U. and usher in political uncertainty that Moscow could exploit.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine reduced Moscow’s influence across other post-Soviet countries, including Moldova, where the government accelerated its march toward the E.U. and broke economic ties with Russia, said Anastasia Pociumban, a research fellow at the German Council on Foreign Relations. Moscow sees the election as an opening to reverse the trend.
“Russia is weaker now as a geopolitical actor, but wants to retain Moldova in its sphere of influence,” Ms. Pociumban said.
President Sandu’s government has accused the Kremlin of planning to spend 100 million euros to finance political campaigns, spread disinformation and organize protests to challenge the outcome of the vote. In previous votes, Moldovan authorities have accused Russia-linked networks of offering voters bribes.
Many of the efforts, the Moldovan government has asserted, have been funneled through Ilan Shor, a fugitive Moldovan businessman sheltering in Russia. His efforts to prop up pro-Moscow politicians in the country have vexed the leadership in Chisinau, the capital, for years.
Ms. Sandu has warned that Moldova’s independence is under threat, arguing that a victory for pro-Russia politicians in the election could turn Moldova into a staging ground for Moscow to invade Ukraine’s neighboring Odesa region.
A day after Ms. Sandu’s speech, Russia’s foreign intelligence service issued a statement claiming that European forces were planning to invade and occupy Moldova to enforce a “Euro-democracy” dictatorship led by Ms. Sandu following the election.
Western analysts saw the statement as Russia projecting its own possible intentions onto Europe and stoking fears among Moldovan voters of being dragged into the Ukraine war. Russia-linked accounts online claimed falsely to have photo evidence of French forces already arriving.
The Kremlin denied Ms. Sandu’s accusations and accused her of silencing the legitimate views of pro-Russia Moldovans.
Russia’s torrent of disinformation online has sought to portray Ms. Sandu’s government as corrupt, autocratic and bellicose. It included outlandish lies, such as that Ms. Sandu schemed to acquire sperm donations from celebrities, promoted L.G.B.T. issues on the payroll of billionaire George Soros, and declared a military emergency.
According to NewsGuard, a company that tracks disinformation, posts about these narratives have garnered at least 17 million views since July.
Ms. Pociumban said Moscow’s main message has been that Ms. Sandu’s government is a dictatorship run by the E.U. that is risking chaos and repeats of Ukraine and Georgia, where opposing the Kremlin’s will led to war and decline.
Oleg Matveychev, a member of Russia’s Parliament from the ruling United Russia party, encapsulated the Kremlin’s messaging, warning that Moldova’s vote will decide whether the country becomes a “second Ukraine.”
Moldova’s economy has struggled amid the war in neighboring Ukraine, with the pro-Russian opposition looking to harness those economic woes as a protest vote.
“The main aim of Russia in Moldova currently is to use these local contradictions and problems, which are quite numerous, to slow down Moldova’s integration with Europe,” said Maksim Samorukov, a fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center. He said Moscow wants to drag Moldova back into the “geopolitical gray zone.”
Paul Sonne is an international correspondent, focusing on Russia and the varied impacts of President Vladimir V. Putin’s domestic and foreign policies, with a focus on the war against Ukraine.
Michael Schwirtz is the global intelligence correspondent for The Times based in London.
Lara Jakes, a Times reporter based in Rome, reports on conflict and diplomacy, with a focus on weapons and the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East. She has been a journalist for more than 30 years.
Steven Lee Myers covers misinformation and disinformation from San Francisco. Since joining The Times in 1989, he has reported from around the world, including Moscow, Baghdad, Beijing and Seoul.
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