COMMENTARY: Latvia Sounds the Alarm: Drones and Missiles, Russia's Hybrid War Is Already at Our Door

COMMENTARY: Latvia Sounds the Alarm: Drones and Missiles, Russia's Hybrid War Is Already at Our Door

Introduction: when a small country tells the truth that large ones avoid

The Latvian alarm: a voice that deserves to be heard

There are truths that only those who live the threat directly have the courage to speak. Latvia, a country of 1.8 million people on the eastern border of NATO, is one of them. On June 22, 2026, according to information relayed by Fox News, Latvian intelligence services issued a formal alert: Russia is preparing hybrid provocations against NATO's Eastern Flank, involving drones and missiles. This statement is not the rhetoric of a government seeking to amplify a threat for domestic political reasons. It is an assessment from intelligence services that have lived in direct contact with the Russian war machine for decades.

Latvia knows what it means to be in Moscow's crosshairs. It lived under Soviet occupation for half a century. It recovered its independence in 1991 with a significant Russian-speaking population on its territory — roughly 25% — that Moscow has always used as a pretext for interference. It has watched how Russian hybrid provocations against Ukraine preceded and accompanied a full-scale invasion. And it draws the lesson with a clarity that its more comfortably distant Western partners should study carefully.

Hybrid war is not a metaphor: it is already here

The term "hybrid war" is sometimes used as a convenient abstraction that allows one to avoid more direct words. Let me be direct: the Russian hybrid war against the Baltic states is not an academic concept or a future scenario. It is already under way, at a level of intensity that many prefer not to name for what it is. The cyberattacks against Estonian infrastructure, the drones violating Baltic airspace, the GPS jamming disrupting navigation, the disinformation campaigns targeting Russian-speaking minorities, the sabotage of undersea infrastructure — all of this is war. Hybrid, certainly. But war.

The difference between this permanent low-intensity war and an open conventional war is a difference of degree, not of nature. And what the Latvian alarm means is that the degree is rising. Preparation for more spectacular provocations — involving long-range drones and cruise missiles — represents a quantitative and qualitative threshold crossing that merits a qualitatively different response in kind.

The profile of the Russian hybrid threat in 2026

Drones: the weapon of choice for ambiguity

Drones have become the quintessential weapon of Russian hybrid war for a simple reason: they allow military effects while maintaining ambiguity of attribution. A drone can fly over an Estonian military installation, photograph or disrupt equipment, and disappear before being shot down — without authorities having sufficient legal and political certainty to attribute the act to the Russian state and trigger a NATO response.

This deliberate ambiguity is the signature of Russian doctrine in the grey zone. It is all the more problematic because the drones used in these operations are not necessarily identifiable military models — they can be modified commercial units, produced in large numbers, easily replaceable, and difficult to distinguish from stray civilian aircraft. Latvia, Finland, and Estonia have all documented incidents involving unidentified drones near military or sensitive installations, without being able to formally prove their Russian origin.

Cruise missiles: escalating the provocation

If drones represent the lower tier of the hybrid threat, cruise missiles constitute a significant qualitative escalation. Missile launches — even without striking a precise target on NATO territory — would be a provocation of an order of magnitude greater than drone incursions. They would demonstrate a direct strike capability, leave little ambiguity about attribution, and immediately create intense political pressure on NATO to respond.

This is why the Latvian alert regarding preparations for provocations involving missiles is particularly significant. It suggests that Russian planners may be contemplating crossing an important qualitative threshold — from low-intensity warfare to something that would more closely resemble a direct act of war. This threshold crossing, even for purposes of bluffing or testing, represents a risk of uncontrolled escalation that Western governments cannot underestimate.

The Russian-speaking minority: the demographic weapon

25% of Latvia's population: a permanent lever

Latvia hosts one of the proportionally largest Russian-speaking populations in the Baltic states: approximately 25% of its population has Russian as its mother tongue, a legacy of the Soviet colonization policy that encouraged the settlement of Russian workers in occupied republics. This demographic reality is a strategic vulnerability that Moscow carefully maintains through media channels, funding of cultural organizations, and regular diplomatic pressure over the "treatment" of the Russian-speaking minority.

Russia used the pretext of "protecting Russian speakers" as a justification for its aggression in Ukraine — first in Crimea, then in the Donbas, then for the full invasion of 2022. Latvian authorities have good reason to closely monitor Russian attempts to radicalize or instrumentalize their Russian-speaking minority. This is not paranoia — it is the rational reading of a well-documented operating method.

Integration as a structural response

Latvia's response to this vulnerability is not repressive but integrative — with nuances. Riga has pursued policies of Latvian language instruction at all levels of schooling, seeking to create a common citizenship that transcends the linguistic divisions inherited from the Soviet era. These policies are controversial and have sometimes created tensions, but they aim at a clear strategic objective: reducing vulnerability to Russian instrumentalization of the Russian-speaking community.

The war in Ukraine has paradoxically accelerated this integration process. Many Latvian Russian speakers who had cultural affinities with Russia were profoundly shocked by the 2022 invasion and clearly positioned themselves on the Latvian and European side. The brutality of the Russian aggression cut through an identity debate that years of cultural policy had failed to resolve. War has a brutal pedagogical quality that one should not be compelled to salute.

The precedents: how Russia has used hybrid war before

Estonia in 2007: the first cyberwar

In 2007, Estonia experienced what is considered the first major state cyberattack against a country. In reaction to the relocation of a Soviet soldier statue in Tallinn, Russia launched a series of coordinated cyberattacks that paralyzed Estonian government, banking, and media websites for several days. Formal attribution to the Russian state was difficult to prove — that was the trick — but few specialists doubt the source.

This 2007 incident was a global wake-up call on new forms of unconventional warfare. It led to the creation of the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence in Tallinn, the formalization of cyberdefence doctrines within the Alliance, and an awareness — still too slow — that attacks on digital infrastructure can be just as devastating as physical attacks.

The submarine cable incidents and sabotage operations

Since 2022, several incidents involving undersea communication and energy cables in the Baltic Sea have been attributed with varying degrees of certainty to Russian or pro-Russian actors. The most famous is the sabotage of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline in September 2022, whose attribution remains officially unresolved but which many Western intelligence services attribute to actors linked to Russia or third parties acting with its knowledge.

These acts of sabotage are textbook hybrid warfare: they create economic and security disruptions, maintain uncertainty over attribution, and test the resilience of the targeted countries and their capacity to respond. The multiplication of these incidents since 2022 is an indicator of the intensification of Russian hybrid warfare that the Latvian alert of June 2026 documents and extends.

Latvia's defenses against the hybrid threat

A massive investment surge since 2022

Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Latvia has massively accelerated its defense investments. Latvian defense spending has exceeded 3% of GDP — among the highest in NATO relative to the size of the economy — and covers both conventional military capabilities and defenses against hybrid threats. Missile defense systems, counter-drone capabilities, cybersecurity, and the resilience of critical infrastructure have all been reinforced.

Latvia hosts a multinational NATO battalion based at Ādaži, composed of troops from several allied nations with Canada as the framework nation. This battalion constitutes the decisive tripwire — the force whose engagement in the event of aggression guarantees a collective response. Its build-up toward a full brigade, underway since 2022, will further strengthen this function.

Societal resilience: the cornerstone of defense

Latvia's response to hybrid warfare extends well beyond pure military capabilities. The government has invested in societal resilience at multiple levels: training citizens to detect disinformation, state continuity plans in the event of cyberattack or occupation, civilian emergency stockpiles, and national defense education integrated into school curricula. The Latvian National Guard (Zemessardze), the territorial defense reserve force, has been significantly reinforced in personnel and equipment.

These investments in resilience do not make headlines the way a Patriot missile purchase does. But they may be just as important for resistance to hybrid warfare. A society that does not panic in the face of cyberattacks, that continues to function despite destabilization attempts, and whose citizens know how to act in a crisis is a society that hybrid warfare cannot easily break.

NATO's reaction to Baltic alerts

Intensified patrols and exercises

Latvian alerts and converging signals from other intelligence services have produced concrete responses from NATO. Air patrols over the Baltic states have been reinforced, with a greater presence of allied fighters on ground alert at bases in the region. Cyberattack and hybrid attack response exercises have been organized urgently to test crisis management procedures.

The Baltic Air Policing mission — the system through which NATO ensures the surveillance and defense of Baltic airspace for countries that lack significant national air forces — has been reinforced through additional rotations. Nations that had conducted only brief missions were asked to extend their deployments or replace them with shorter gaps between rotations.

The push for permanent presence intensifies

The June 2026 alerts have also reinforced Baltic state demands for a transformation of NATO's presence on their territory from rotational to permanent. The argument is simple: rotating troops must relearn the terrain, local procedures, and national partners with each rotation. Permanent troops know the ground, have built relationships with local forces, and are fully integrated into national defenses.

The Ankara summit of July 7–8, 2026 will be the occasion to officially decide whether NATO takes that step. The political obstacles — notably the reluctance to formally cross the line drawn by the 1997 NATO-Russia Founding Act — have been largely sidestepped in practice since 2022. What remains is to formalize this operational reality in a political document that would send a clear signal to Moscow.

Critical infrastructure: the real target of hybrid warfare

Electricity, telecommunications, water: the Achilles' heels

Russian hybrid warfare targets critical infrastructure as a priority — electricity, telecommunications, water supply, transportation. These systems are fundamental to the normal functioning of a modern society, and their degradation creates disproportionate effects relative to the military effort required to attack them. A country whose electrical grid is paralyzed for several days is a country in existential crisis, even without a single enemy soldier on its territory.

Latvia, like its Baltic neighbors, has invested massively in securing and strengthening the resilience of its critical infrastructure since 2022. The flagship project is the disconnection of the Baltic electrical grid (BRELL) from the Soviet-era network connected to Russia and Belarus, and its integration into the European ENTSO-E grid. This technically complex project, of considerable strategic importance, was slated for completion in 2025. It represents a significant reduction in the energy vulnerability of the Baltic states to a Russian cutoff or manipulation of the electrical network.

The risk of simultaneous failures across multiple systems

What concerns Latvian security planners most is not a single attack against one piece of infrastructure, but a coordinated simultaneous attack across multiple systems. A cyberattack on the electrical grid coordinated with GPS disruptions, drone incidents, and an intensive disinformation campaign would represent simultaneous pressure on multiple fronts that would strain the response capabilities of any society.

This multi-vector simultaneous attack doctrine is documented in Russian military thinking — it aims to saturate the adversary's response capabilities, create confusion, and exploit social panic to amplify military effects. Latvia's preparation for this scenario takes the form of integrated crisis exercises — not just military but civil-military — that test coordination among ministries, essential service companies, media, and the armed forces.

Disinformation: the weapon that always comes first

Russian narratives in the Baltic information space

Before drones, before missiles, before cyberattacks, Russian hybrid warfare deploys in the information space. Carefully constructed narratives target Russian-speaking populations in the Baltic states via Russian media — RT, Sputnik, and networks of lower-profile websites — to fuel a sense of victimization, distrust toward Baltic governments, and nostalgia for the Soviet order.

These narratives are sophisticated and persistent. They do not aim to convince the majority of the population — an unrealistic goal — but to keep a minority in a state of receptiveness to Russian interference, and to amplify existing social fractures. During a crisis — a cyberattack, a border incident — these populations prepared by years of disinformation can become additional vectors of chaos.

Counter-narrative as a component of defense

Latvia has developed some of the most advanced counter-narrative and fact-checking capabilities in Europe. Organizations such as Re:Check and government media literacy initiatives aim to equip citizens — particularly Russian speakers — with the tools needed to identify and resist disinformation. The integration of media literacy education into school curricula is a long-term measure whose effects are measured in generations, not quarters.

These efforts sit at the intersection of educational policy, media policy, and national security policy. They require coordination that goes well beyond the defense ministry alone. It is a complex governance challenge that Latvia manages with limited resources but clear determination. This integrated approach is a lesson that the large democracies of Western Europe — which still struggle to coordinate their responses to Russian disinformation — should study carefully.

The Baltic call to Europe: do you hear the difference?

What the Baltic states ask for and do not always receive

The Baltic states have been asking their European partners for specific things for years. First, a permanent military presence, not rotational. Then, a firm and rapid response to hybrid provocations — not weeks of diplomatic deliberation. Then coordinated investments in cybersecurity and infrastructure at the NATO scale. And finally, massive support for Ukraine — because Ukrainian resistance directly protects the Baltic states.

These requests are not always met at the level their urgency demands. Large European capitals have their own priorities, their own budgetary constraints, their own electoral calculations. For a Berliner or a Parisian, the Baltic threat is geographically distant and politically abstract. For a Rigan or a Tallinite, it is the reality of every morning. This perceptual asymmetry is one of the fundamental challenges of Atlantic solidarity.

The legitimate impatience of small vulnerable countries

The impatience of the Baltic states is legitimate and understandable. They were the Cassandras of the Russian threat for years — warning that Putin would not stop, that appeasement would not work, that force was the only language Moscow understood. They were accused of obsession, paranoia, excess of historical memory. They were right, and the events of 2022 vindicated them cruelly.

This hard-won credibility gives them a moral right to be heard with greater attention today. When Latvia sounds the alarm over preparations for hybrid provocations, Europe has an obligation — moral and strategic — to treat that alert with the seriousness it deserves. Not first verify it in ten committees, then analyze it in twelve subgroups, then draft a position paper. Read it, believe it, and respond.

International coordination in the face of the threat

Existing mechanisms and their limits

The response to Russian hybrid threats in the Baltic states involves coordination among multiple actors: national governments, NATO structures, the European Union, and bilateral initiatives. These mechanisms exist, but their effectiveness depends on their speed of activation — and hybrid warfare often plays out in the first hours, before diplomatic consultation procedures have been completed.

NATO has its Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence in Riga, specifically dedicated to countering disinformation. The European Union has developed instruments such as EUvsDisinfo and the Code of Practice on Disinformation. These initiatives are useful, but they operate primarily on the scale of weeks and months — not on the scale of the critical hour when a hybrid provocation creates maximum effect.

Rapid response: an identified need that remains unresolved

The lack of a rapid response mechanism to hybrid provocations is one of the most serious gaps in the Euro-Atlantic security architecture. For conventional provocations — an aircraft violating airspace — clear procedures exist. For a massive cyberattack against the infrastructure of a Baltic country, the procedure is less clear: who declares it an act of aggression covered by Article 5? Through what decision-making process? With what proportionate response?

These questions are unresolved, and the Latvian alert of June 2026 should prompt the Ankara summit to address them directly. Pre-authorized rapid response protocols for hybrid provocations — approved in advance by member governments for a defined number of scenarios — would reduce decision timelines and make deterrence more credible.

What Latvia tells Europe by sounding the alarm

A demand for concrete solidarity

When Latvia publicly sounds the alarm over Russian preparations for provocations, it is doing several things simultaneously. It informs its own citizens to maintain vigilance. It signals to allied intelligence services that it is sharing its assessments and expects reciprocal sharing. It challenges partner governments: are you taking this threat seriously? Are you adjusting your defense posture in the region?

It is also a demand for concrete solidarity: not communiqués expressing "deep concern," but additional aircraft on alert, missile defense systems deployed, cybersecurity reinforced, joint exercises accelerated. Solidarity rhetoric is useful politically. Concrete solidarity, measurable in deployed military capabilities, is what the Baltic states need.

The message to European citizens

The Latvian alarm also has a frequently overlooked addressee: the ordinary citizens of Western Europe. The men and women living in Lyon, Munich, or Antwerp who find it hard to feel in their daily lives the reality of the Russian hybrid war. For them, Latvia sends a simple message: this war is not far away. It is at our door. The drones flying over our military installations could fly over yours if NATO deterrence weakens. Your security and ours are linked.

This message is difficult to convey in Western media dominated by domestic concerns. Yet it is the most important message the Baltic states have been transmitting for years. Their alerts of June 2026 are not alarmist catastrophism: they are situation reports from a country that lives in direct contact with a threat that all of Europe should take seriously.

Ukrainian lessons for the Baltic states

What Ukraine learned about hybrid warfare preceding invasion

Ukraine lived through eight years — from 2014 to 2022 — of intensive hybrid warfare before the full conventional invasion. The large-scale cyberattacks against Ukrainian infrastructure (NotPetya in 2017, the attacks on the electrical grid in 2015 and 2016), the targeted assassinations of pro-European figures, the bombing in the Donbas, the massive disinformation — all of this preceded and prepared the invasion of 2022.

The Baltic states study this Ukrainian sequence as an operational playbook for what could happen to them. The fundamental difference is that they are NATO members, which radically changes Putin's calculation. But hybrid warfare below the threshold that would trigger Article 5 remains an option that Moscow can use to harass, destabilize, and test without triggering the Alliance's collective response.

Adapting defenses to the Ukrainian lesson

Latvian, Estonian, and Lithuanian armed forces are carefully studying the tactics and technologies developed by Ukraine in its defense against Russian aggression. Ukrainian counter-drone systems, in-depth defense tactics, the use of drones for reconnaissance and precision strikes, resilience of communications under electronic jamming — all of these operational innovations are being analyzed, adapted, and integrated into Baltic defense doctrines.

This capacity for rapid adaptation is one of the advantages small armies hold over large military bureaucracies: they can change doctrine faster. Latvia cannot afford ten-year military reform cycles — it must adapt in real time to a threat that continuously evolves. This agility is itself a form of resilience.

The resilience of Latvian society against Russian pressure

Media literacy and resistance to disinformation

Latvia has developed over several years a societal resilience strategy that has become a model across NATO. Faced with the pressure of Russian disinformation amplified through Russian-language media that part of the Latvian population still consumes, the authorities have invested massively in media literacy. Integrated school programs teach young Latvians to distinguish verifiable information from propaganda. These initiatives have already demonstrated their effectiveness during recent elections, where attempts at foreign interference were detected and thwarted.

The Latvian government has also put in place social media monitoring mechanisms and rapid disinformation reporting systems. In coordination with NATO partners and the European Union, specialized teams identify and counter Russian narratives aimed at undermining social cohesion and exacerbating tensions with the Russian-speaking minority. This information war is ongoing at all times, well before any kinetic conflict, and Latvia is one of the best-armed countries to wage it.

Integration policy for the Russian-speaking minority: a central security issue

One of the most exploited vulnerabilities in the Russian hybrid strategy in Latvia is the presence of a large Russian-speaking minority — roughly 25% of the population — part of which remains influenced by Russian media and culture. The integration policy for this minority has become a national security issue. Educational system reforms, which have progressively strengthened Latvian-language instruction at the expense of Russian in public schools, are part of this strategy.

These reforms are controversial but necessary according to Latvian authorities. The security argument is straightforward: a society in which a significant fraction consumes exclusively Russian media and identifies more with Moscow than with Riga is a society vulnerable to manipulation. Latvia draws lessons from what happened in Eastern Ukraine in 2014, where years of disinformation prepared the ground for military destabilization. Prevention is better than cure, even if the treatment is painful.

The economic dimension of hybrid warfare: targeting vital infrastructure

Cyberattacks against Latvian infrastructure: a troubling record

The Russian hybrid war against Latvia is not limited to disinformation. The country's digital and physical infrastructure has been subjected to repeated attacks for several years. Cyberattacks targeting banking systems, transportation infrastructure, and government networks have been attributed to groups linked to Russian intelligence services. These attacks, generally denied by Moscow, form part of a coherent strategy of pressure on Baltic societies aimed at testing their resilience and creating a sense of insecurity.

The Latvian cybersecurity agency has documented a sharp increase in intrusion attempts since the start of the war in Ukraine. The most targeted sectors are energy, telecommunications, and critical infrastructure. The implementation of the European Union's NIS2 directive has helped strengthen digital defenses, but experts agree that the threat evolves faster than the defenses. Latvia, like its Baltic neighbors, is in a permanent race to keep its critical systems out of the reach of GRU and FSB hackers.

Energy as a weapon: the Baltic transition toward energy independence

For decades, the Baltic states were energetically dependent on Russia: natural gas, electricity delivered via Soviet-era networks, Soviet-inherited oil infrastructure. This dependency constituted an obvious leverage point for Moscow. The decision to connect to the European Continental European Network and to disconnect from the BRELL network (Belarus-Russia-Estonia-Latvia-Lithuania) represents one of the most important strategic decisions taken by the Baltic states since their accession to NATO.

This synchronization with the European electrical grid, expected to be complete before the end of 2025, eliminates one of the most exploitable energy vulnerabilities for Russia. Combined with the near-total abandonment of Russian gas after 2022 and the development of LNG terminals enabling gas imports from diverse sources, this energy transformation is a quiet strategic victory for the Baltic states against the dependency imposed by Moscow. Energy independence is also national security.

Conclusion: listening to Riga means protecting Paris

Solidarity is not charity

The security of Latvia is inseparable from the security of Europe. This is not charity toward a small vulnerable country: it is a fundamental strategic reality. If the Russian hybrid war succeeds in destabilizing a Baltic NATO member state, the effects propagate immediately throughout the Alliance: Article 5 credibility compromised, signal sent to Putin that his methods work, pressure on other Alliance members in analogous situations.

Listening to the Latvian alarm with the seriousness it deserves means protecting the credibility of NATO, reinforcing deterrence against other potential aggressions, and honoring the fundamental collective defense commitment that every member made upon joining the Alliance. It is not Western Europe doing a favor for small Baltic countries. It is NATO honoring its own reason for existence.

The response the alert deserves

The response that the Latvian alarm of June 2026 deserves is both immediate and structural. Immediate: reinforce now the allied presence in the Baltic states, intensify hybrid defense exercises, activate real-time intelligence-sharing mechanisms. Structural: decide at the Ankara summit on a permanent NATO presence in the Baltic countries, adopt rapid response protocols for hybrid provocations, and invest massively in the region's counter-drone and cyberdefense capabilities.

Zelensky paid the price for Europe's refusal to listen to Ukrainian warnings between 2014 and 2022. The Baltic states are today issuing similar alerts. We have a chance not to repeat the same mistake. Let us seize it.

By Maxime Marquette, columnist

Columnist's transparency note

My clear commitment and its implications

I unreservedly support the defense of the Baltic states and of every NATO member state against Russian aggression. This conviction clearly shapes my commentary: I treat Latvian alerts as credible and NATO's responses as insufficient. Readers more skeptical of the Russian threat or more reluctant about military spending will find my tone too alarmist — that is their right.

I have no ties to Baltic state governments or to defense industries. My commentary is based on publicly accessible open sources. I do not claim access to classified intelligence information.

What I do not know

I do not know whether the Russian hybrid provocations will materialize in the form described by the Latvian alerts. I do not know the exact extent of Russian preparations or their timeline. What I do know is that the alerts come from serious intelligence services, that they are consistent with other documented signals, and that recent history argues for taking them seriously rather than minimizing them.

I acknowledge that my reading of the situation may be influenced by my political convictions. Every political commentator's is. Honesty requires saying so explicitly.

Sources

Primary sources

Fox News — Russia preparing hybrid attacks on NATO's eastern flank, intelligence warns — June 22, 2026

The Guardian — Russia preparing possible provocation in Baltic states or Poland — June 26, 2026

Army Recognition — Russia rehearses Baltic strike operations from Kaliningrad — June 21, 2026

The Telegraph — Western officials suspect possible Russian attack on Baltic NATO state — June 27, 2026

Secondary sources

The Guardian — NATO leaders fear they can no longer rely on US — June 27, 2026

ISW — Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment June 23, 2026

European Parliament — NATO Ankara Summit and Regional Security Briefing — June 26, 2026