European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said Europe must brace for a new era of increased hybrid threats, and the timing could hardly be more on the nose: the continent’s rulers are once again speaking the language of emergency while ordinary people are left to absorb the consequences. The warning landed as Spain’s government was plunged into a new crisis after a leaked police report suggested Moroccan forces played a role in pushing migrants into Ceuta in an unprecedented border violation. That’s the border regime in plain sight. States accuse, states deny, and migrants get used as leverage in the machinery of control.
Fortress Europe Gets Its Next Upgrade
Denmark’s intelligence agency PET said Russia is "actively" preparing sabotage operations against Denmark, particularly its defence industry. PET told AFP that "The Russian intelligence services are actively preparing acts of sabotage targeting the defence industry in Denmark," and said the services were recruiting "ordinary Danes" on social media to take photos that can be used in planning acts of sabotage. Emil Graesholm, PET head of counterintelligence at the Danish Security and Intelligence Service, told Berlingske that the agency was sharing details about the methods "because they don't need to look like a spy movie." The line is almost too neat: the security state insists on spectacle, then says the threat is mundane, embedded in everyday life, and useful for justifying more surveillance, more policing, more control.
The warning came after EU countries summoned Russia's envoys and discussed fresh sanctions after an explosive-laden drone incident in Germany that the bloc's foreign policy chief said bore the marks of "state-sponsored terrorism." EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said, "It is clear that it has all the hallmarks of state-sponsored terrorism. The question is: what do we do about this," before chairing a meeting of the bloc’s foreign ministers in Ireland. EU ministers weighed how best to respond to the attempted drone attack on Wednesday but struggled to find new ways to meet the challenge without resorting to military means. The EU has already slapped almost two dozen packages of sanctions on Russia over the war in Ukraine, hitting more than 3,000 officials, oligarchs and entities including banks, energy companies and drone makers. The Brussels apparatus calls this governance. It looks a lot like managed escalation.
Russia has in recent months been accused of ratcheting up sabotage attacks against European backers of Ukraine, as Moscow's forces stall on the front line of the war launched by the Kremlin in 2022. Back in 2024, PET said the Russian threat against Denmark, a staunch supporter of Ukraine, had grown stronger. Since the start of the full-scale invasion, Denmark has provided Ukraine with at least €10 billion in military support and around €1 billion in civilian contributions, the Danish foreign ministry said. In June, Copenhagen announced its 30th military aid package for Kyiv worth around 4.4 billion kroner (€577 million), including ammunition, arms, equipment and training for Ukrainian soldiers. The state’s answer to war keeps arriving in packages, budgets and procurement lines. People get the bill. Arms firms get the contracts.
Courts, Sanctions and the Machinery of Control
Separately, the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled that Russia's autocratic regime is not, on its own, enough to justify freezing the assets of a company indirectly linked to someone under EU sanctions. The court said national authorities need objective and sufficiently solid evidence of proven control over the entity concerned. The case involved Inter Rao Lietuva, a Lithuanian electricity company that Lithuanian authorities placed on the national asset-freeze list even though it was not directly targeted by EU sanctions against Russia. Lithuanian authorities argued that 51% of its shares are owned by Rao Nordic, a Finland-registered company wholly owned by PJSC Inter RAO, a major Russian state-controlled energy firm, and said the company was ultimately controlled by the Russian state and therefore under the indirect control of President Vladimir Putin, who is subject to EU sanctions. The CJEU rejected that reasoning, saying the mere fact that Russia's political system is autocratic and oligarchic, giving Putin virtually unlimited power, does not by itself amount to sufficient evidence of his control over the company. The court also said national authorities may take into account all relevant information to assess the effectiveness of control, even if it is informal, by another person or entity subject to EU sanctions.
Brussels currently has around 3,000 entities and individuals blacklisted as part of the Russian industrial-military complex, with the list pending extension on 15 September. The blacklist is a familiar instrument: not justice, not peace, just another administrative weapon in a continent governed through coercion, paperwork and economic punishment.
Procurement Scandals and the Peace Facility
In another strand of the security and governance debate, Estonia's Defence Minister Hanno Pevkur resigned after an arms deal for Ukraine involving EU funds paid to an Indian company with no track record of making shells. Pevkur announced on Wednesday that he would step down from his political post after it emerged that the government had used European Union funding to purchase artillery shells for Ukraine from companies with no previous track record of producing the weapons. Estonian public broadcaster ERR reported that the government struck a deal in 2024 to acquire artillery shells for Ukraine, paying €70 million upfront from the EU’s European Peace Facility to fund the purchase. The companies involved had never previously sold a single artillery shell, and Estonia is now disputing the contracts in a case before the European Court of Arbitration in Strasbourg.
Pevkur, who has served as defence minister since 2022, addressed the scandal while announcing his resignation on public broadcaster ETV. He said that, as minister, he must accept responsibility for the entire area under his authority. "Although the minister does not count socks and ammunition or conduct contract negotiations, the National Audit Office’s criticisms, primarily concerning the activities of the Defence Forces and the Centre for Defence Investments, raise the question of political responsibility," Pevkur said. He also said, "The defence minister does not conduct contract negotiations. The defence minister does not count socks and ammunition," adding, "The defence minister makes the fundamental decision to support Ukraine." That’s the modern state in miniature: ministers claim responsibility when the contracts collapse, then insist they never touched the contracts.
European Commission spokesperson Christian Wigand said Brussels was in contact with the Estonian authorities to investigate whether Estonia must pay back the €70 million of European Peace Facility funds. "There are, of course, safeguards and there are recovery processes in place to make sure that taxpayers' money is well spent," he said, adding that he could not clarify when the talks would take place. Pevkur's resignation follows the high-profile departure of Latvia's Defence Minister Andris Sprūds in May. The names change. The system doesn’t.