THE DENIED WAR: The Russian Grey-Zone Aggression against Europe and Its Unfolding Trajectory

Modern war rarely begins with an open armed provocation. It starts with concealed, prolonged, and systematic preparation. In this sense, Russia is already fighting a war in Europe — just below the threshold where NATO is obliged to respond. This is the central conclusion of the new analytical report, The Denied War: The Russian Grey-Zone Aggression against Europe and Its Unfolding Trajectory.

The study reconstructs the internal logic of Russia’s grey-zone operations against EU and NATO member states and outlines their likely trajectory. It also identifies a fundamental conceptual mistake in the Western approach: treating Russian hybrid operations as a separate and autonomous domain of confrontation.

In Russian doctrine and strategic practice, sub-threshold activity and open armed aggression are not separated. They are viewed as part of a single escalatory continuum — from covert destabilization to full-scale military operations. From this perspective, ongoing grey-zone activities are highly likely to represent the preparatory phase of a broader confrontation. Their purpose is to weaken European resilience, exploit political and procedural vulnerabilities inside NATO, and shape the operational environment in ways that would allow Moscow to rapidly escalate when the moment is deemed advantageous.

The report identifies a qualitative shift after 2023: from what could previously be dismissed as isolated incidents toward deliberate operational preparation of the environment by 2025. This includes:

• systematic pressure on critical infrastructure and logistics;

• electronic warfare activities, including GPS jamming;

• recruitment of sabotage assets;

• the use of unmanned systems to map and potentially target strategic facilities.

The operational pattern has evolved from sporadic actions toward increasingly integrated information, cyber, and cyber-physical attacks. These activities are accompanied by direct operations on European soil and a growing number of airspace violations by both manned and unmanned aircraft.

What happens if sustained brinkmanship reaches the “point of no return,” when continuous pressure just below the threshold eventually tips into a kinetic response?

The report outlines five potential scenarios of open armed conflict. Two primary contingencies include:

• a “Suwałki Gambit,” aimed at isolating the Baltic states by targeting the corridor between Kaliningrad and Belarus;

• a full-scale regional war conducted simultaneously across land, air, maritime, cyber, and space domains, with the Baltic region as its central theater.

The study also examines scenarios involving the seizure of strategic islands — Gotland and Saaremaa — as well as escalation dynamics in the Arctic, including potential operations against Finland and Norway.

However, the report’s key contribution lies not only in outlining geostrategic attack scenarios. It also reconstructs the operational logic of Russian aggression, taking into account the new military capabilities Russia has developed during the war against Ukraine.

The authors conclude that the principal threat to Allied security lies not merely in the quantity or composition of Russia’s military forces, but in a coherent operational methodology. This approach combines systematic internal destabilization of the adversary, indiscriminate armed violence prioritizing long-range strike capabilities (“firepower saturation”), newly enhanced asymmetric capabilities based on unmanned systems, and an institutional tolerance for high levels of its own losses.