Belgian defence minister Theo Francken said “there will be more hybrid threat actions” in the coming months, as he starkly warned “it will be a dark winter for Europe.” Speaking at Euronews’s Defence and Space Summit, Francken said hybrid warfare “is not something that Russia [has been] doing for two or three years,” but for much longer and it has “expertise” in this area, often making it difficult for western countries to investigate them and attribute responsibility. He particularly worried about Russia’s increased use of jet-powered drones. He said Belgium used to be “the worse pupil in class” two years ago with low defence spending, but it has since improved and ramped it up its planning.
He said Europe got too used to its comfortable welfare state protections at the cost of adequate spending on defence, and this is now changing. And it’s beautiful to have a pension system, to have social welfare systems [for] when somebody gets sick, when somebody lost his job – we have everything. But when there’s war or there’s hybrid threats, we don’t have anything.
So yeah, we’re in a really difficult position.”
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