Danish Prime Minister on Russia’s hybrid attacks: “We react too politely”

The Danish Prime Minister, Mette Frederiksen, stated that European countries have been experiencing hybrid attacks with a “Russian trace” almost constantly and believes that Western countries’ reaction is “too polite.”

The Danish Prime Minister made this statement during an expert discussion in the United States on the sidelines of the NATO Summit.

During the discussion, the moderator cited a number of examples of critical infrastructure incidents with a possible Russian trace and asked at what point, according to Frederiksen, NATO allies could invoke at least Article 4 of the North Atlantic Treaty to convene consultations and begin to do something to deter Russia from new hybrid attacks.

“When you are listing some of the events that we have seen in recent months, it sounds like a bad movie, right? And I think that’s our main problem. I had the same feeling feeling before Russia attacked Ukraine. We just couldn’t understand that Russia was really going to start a full-scale war in Europe. And it was going to do it,” the Danish prime minister said.

The Danish Prime Minister continued that the “hybrid war” is actually already underway, and Western countries seem to refuse to perceive this reality. 

“They are attacking us every day now. Not only on critical infrastructure; it’s about hybrid attacks, cyberattacks, disinformation, but also on migration. We’ve seen this in Belarus, on the border with Lithuania, we’ve seen it on the Finish border. They are using migrants to destabilize European countries. All of this is part of modern warfare. I think we have to take it much more seriously. And it should be prioritized in NATO. I think we have to look at it as an attack on us, instead of ‘something has happened again, and again, and again.’ I think we have been too polite in our reaction to this.”

Mette Frederiksen, Danish Prime Minister

Earlier this week, a senior NATO official told the media that he believed a NATO country could request protection from the allies under Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty because of Russia’s hybrid operations and cyberattacks.