Finnish cool is a powerful weapon that intrigued Europeans have just discovered. The cold, determined reaction of police officials, who were quick to comment in front of the press but perfectly sure of their knowledge in the investigation into the Christmas Day damage of underwater electric cables, may have come as a surprise south of the Baltic, but it is second nature in a country that shares not only a sea but 1,300 kilometers of border with Russia. In Helsinki, when it comes to boarding a tanker from a Russian port suspected of cutting the cables, there's no need to mince words. They board.

Everyone in the region knows that cables like these, linking Scandinavia to the Baltic states, Poland or Germany, can be damaged accidentally. But everyone also knows that, in recent years, and even more so since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, these valuable electricity and communications infrastructures have been among the targets of another war Russia is waging on Europe: Hybrid warfare.

"Cool, calm, collect. Once you find out, you have to be in close cooperation and coordination with your allies": This was the advice given in September 2024 by Finnish President Alexander Stubb, warning security experts gathered in Helsinki of the foreseeable rise in hybrid attacks and "information war, sabotage, cyber attacks, attacks on civilian infrastructure."

Instrumentalization

Hardly a week goes by without a European leader alluding to this form of aggression. On Monday, January 6, President Emmanuel Macron spoke to ambassadors on "the acceleration and transformation of the threat," and listed the various forms of Russian aggression in Europe, including attempts to destabilize the electoral process in Moldova and Romania, and the falsification of election results in Georgia.

Migrant networks have also been instrumentalized, with Moscow and Minsk encouraging migrants to cross the border illegally into Poland, Lithuania or Finland. In November 2024, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte accused Russia of conducting "an intensifying campaign of hybrid attacks across our allied territories, interfering directly in our democracies, sabotaging industry and committing violence."

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