Hybrid warfare on the rise, 6 August 2026

It seems like the EU has managed the hybrid war against Spain in a sensible way?

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/aug/04/eu-criticises-spain-migrant-plan-ceuta-crisis-meeting

Also note this passage;

“A statement published by the EU council after the meeting said there was “a common understanding of the need to continue relentlessly fighting migrant smuggling networks, to reinforce returns, to strengthen EU borders, to build deep partnerships with third countries, and to improve foresight”.

It is clear that the EU now stands united in tackling the part of the hybrid war waged through trafficking.

The EU has also provided a lot of firefighting capacity to the countries with many forest fires and you know that the number of arrests is skyrocketing down there.

The administration in Ceuta has commented that there is a new call on social media to head to the enclave again on August 15th, by the way.

https://en.ilsole24ore.com/art/ceuta-alert-social-media-appeals-new-mass-influx-15-august-AJgFVqe?refresh_ce=1

Vatnik Soup, which is a credible source, writes that similar campaigns are underway to initiate a thunder-run against Europe’s eastern border. Those of you who have read Johan No.1 already knew this would come this summer.

Ukraine informed us the other day that a Russian disinformation campaign about Ceuta has also started.

https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2026/07/31/8046738

This source reports extensively on the UA war and, in my opinion, is on the right side; he thinks Spain is not doing enough.

If Spain now gets organized, then Europe’s outer shield is essentially intact against state-organized campaigns against the EU in the way that happened in Ceuta. We can only hope they took notes during the meeting with the EU because if they show unwillingness to handle this, there will surely be consequences for them – 22 EU countries signed the letter to them and the finger is probably already on the trigger to impose a hard border against Spain.

https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2026/08/01/22-eu-leaders-call-for-emergency-talks-over-ceuta-migrant-crisis

I have had a small thought for a while that the EU, through incremental trials, only becomes stronger and better organized, we shall see.

That 22 countries act on their own initiative without it being ground down in the EU for months is very good – we unfortunately did not manage Hungary at all but now we have started against Spain quite promptly.

We have a lot ahead of us – if you have followed UA’s drone strikes on Wildberries, it is an attempt to collapse the Russian banking system, the company is enormous, overleveraged, and the huge central warehouses are burning down to the ground. What do you think a totally written-off Tomteboda would do for Postnord?

I think it’s called creating a black swan, and why would Russia miss that chance against us if we do it to them through Ukraine?

Or Iran, if they block everything in Hormuz at the right time and show that the US does not have control (I don’t know if they can or if the US has control or not), then it could cause ripple effects at the right time.

By pressing the right buttons, one could even trigger a financial crisis, just as Ukraine is trying to do with Russia.

The other threat is increased Russian hybrid warfare against us; now they tried to fly drones with warheads into a Ukrainian cargo plane at an airport in Germany – there was no detonation but otherwise the operation was flawless.

A bit to take with you – when I have long discussed the FPV drone weapon with operators inside Europe against our fighter jets stationed at bases in Europe, the answer has always been “it’s not possible.”

But it was possible, the airports handling Ukrainian deliveries are, according to all available information, already protected due to an elevated threat level and just as Brovdi, the drone king, has already told us, we are so far completely defenseless.

The only reason we don’t have a huge ammunition explosion in Leipzig is a technical fault on the drone that hit a plane in flight, and apparently that a passenger simply grabbed the other drone on the ground.

Putin now has two choices – gradually increase the pressure or go all in.

For my part, I think Europe can best handle a gradual increase and judging by how we acted after Spain, we are now ready to start making tougher decisions. I welcome such a process because it will only make the EU stronger, the phoenix rising and all.

If Putin chooses to escalate to a higher level immediately – there I think Europe’s weaknesses can unfortunately be better exploited since we are not mentally prepared for a war.

Our Supreme Commander asks us to prepare mentally for war, I am mentally prepared for a war if someone can mention it to the Supreme Commander when you talk to him. The Dominican Republic will verbally support Sweden fully through me.

https://www.expressen.se/nyheter/sverige/ob-var-beredda-pa-ryska-angrepp

Yes, we are already preparing major measures to strengthen border protection against the barbarians in the east but so far it is meetings with bottled water and it is not worth more than the paper it is written on until units are in place.

The Baltics have also not managed to mine the border or build fortifications, which is unfortunate. They argued for over two years about the thickness of bunker walls and the concrete mix.

Their tank ditches are like a drainage ditch at the neighbor’s farm, roughly, and legends like Clement Mohlin have gone through satellite images in the Baltics and bluntly concluded that very little has been built in terms of static defense.

“That’s not how you wage war, you have offensive brigades behind that attack,” everyone now screams in a violent chorus, faces bright red.

Yes, but the Baltics themselves lack heavy brigades, Europe has not sent any, and the US just pulled theirs out.

If Putin manages to get inside our decision circle, there is a high risk that we will not be quick enough on that ball.

Budanov warned late 2025 that Russia moved back its timeline for a full invasion of the Baltics to 2027. That German bastard Breuer, who has been nagging about 2029-2031 at the earliest for years so that it has taken a strong hold, is pretty quiet these days, has anyone heard from him?

https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2025/12/20/8012745

Breuer

https://newsukraine.rbc.ua/news/germany-warns-of-possible-russian-attack-1748828263.html

You have all read the posts about Operation Baltics that I spam-posted, you know the broad strokes.

In April this year, RU completed extensive infrastructure work on all roads, road bridges, railway tracks, and railway stations from St. Petersburg, Kursk, Smolensk, and Moscow towards the Baltic border. This is in addition to all the depots, bases, and warehouses they have built in the nearby areas towards the border, which are also turnkey ready.

The Baltics have long discussed air defense and artillery units that have moved in the Pskov area but have not appeared in Ukraine – posted this earlier.

Lukashenko in Belarus is walking a very tightrope and absolutely does not want to go to war but the country canceled 19 forest areas against Ukraine and Poland a few months ago and preparations for mobilization have been made – for example, some hackers found information that schools and arenas were being prepared to receive mobilized personnel.

For UA’s part, they are keeping an eye on things and complaining that RU is building firing positions for artillery and air defense near their border.

Calibration – Belarus will not go to war but can project a threat against Ukraine, Poland, and Lithuania that ties down troops.

Russia also recently closed the border with the Baltics and Finland, which many interpreted as measures to prevent flight during mobilization, or perhaps to prevent oversight.

Rumors about Russian mobilization after the election in September are circulating widely, and RU has at least made preparations by building up the entire organization, hiring new administrators, and forcing everyone to register so they can receive a digital mobilization order. They have also prepared the internal troops for social unrest, so they are now testing their car batteries for electroshock therapy and repainting the cells.

All preparations that can be made to start a war below the level of actual mobilization are thus completed now in the summer of 2026.

Regarding capability, you also know that 30,000 North Koreans in their 11th AC stand behind the border in the Kursk area and can, if Putin so wishes, take over border control and thereby free up two army corps that have a 10-hour driving time by road up to the Baltic border.

Since everyone assumes that units along the northern border with Ukraine are at war with Ukraine, no preparations there are interpreted as capability building against the Baltics. The area has been relatively calm, so there have been every opportunity to resource and train units there.

Rosgvardia has begun forming parts of its organization into maneuver brigades with heavy equipment including artillery; the entire organization is well over 350,000 strong.

FSB, GRU, SOF, SVR all have their own special units prioritized with equipment and training.

The Russian drone weapon is called Rubicon and is set up following the Ukrainian model and well resourced – it is also detectable.

From what I can see, Russia absolutely has the capability today to take on the Baltics, but perhaps it is still a matter of taste until it is no longer so?

I think everyone understands that the USA will not help – they have withdrawn their last offensive unit from Eastern Europe, and the only non-Baltic unit remaining north of the W-E line Daugava is the British heavy battalion, but they are to withdraw their tanks in a reorganization.

https://meta-defense.fr/en/2026/07/18/british-army-replaces-armoured-battlegroup-estonia

Russia has no equipment is probably the next myth flying around, but they have over 5,000 tanks deployed, and we do not see many at all in Ukraine. 250 T90Ms are built per year, and they also build them with fragmentation protection so it’s going fast. Now that Rosgvardia has received heavy equipment, other units have probably received it already.

Yes – Russia will be very careful about going to war with Poland, and the big question is actually whether the German brigade in Lithuania together with the Poles and the Canadian-led brigade will try to cross the Daugava in the event of conflict or not.

Since Belarus can project a threat without starting a war, my thought is that these units will then focus on defending the border against Poland and Lithuania. They then serve no function for the Russian attack plan, as the terrain north of the W-E line Daugava does.

The next big question is whether Russia has tried to accelerate the timeline since autumn 2025 or not – the best thing that can happen for us is if Putin chooses to escalate the hybrid war to a twilight mode but so slowly that he does not get inside our decision cycle. The EU will be able to counter that.

You can be completely sure that he will escalate – Russia is already at war with us, and Iran is fighting for its survival.

Against China, we have just introduced tariffs and various barriers, so they are probably not grateful for our pursuit of world peace either.

It does not matter what we think – it is Russia, Iran, and China who will start a conflict if it comes, and how they perceive the situation is what is interesting.

I was sitting and looking through the below from 2020, and it does not get many things right except the decision-making on our side; we also have to remove the USA from the equation now.

So roughly, I think this will unfortunately play out if there is a rapid escalation – when RU is dug in north of the Daugava and has deployed its drone umbrella, the analysis will be that Europe is not prepared for the losses required to retake the area, and we wish the Baltics all the best going forward.

https://www.gssc.lt/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/165_162_Hooker_proof.pdf

What we end up with remains to be seen, but everything is connected – state actors have started a hybrid war against us, and the faster we counter it, the less war there will be.

The next point is that Ukraine today cannot shoot down ballistic missiles, and according to their own statements, interceptors are lacking.

https://omni.se/zelenskyj-vi-hade-raddat-liv-med-ratt-luftvarnssystem/a/K8bwbM

We know that the USA hit the brakes on Patriot PAC3 because they have used up everything in the Iran war, but Europe is supposed to manufacture what, 3-4 own equivalent systems?

Why don’t we send interceptors to Ukraine? They already have all the platforms for all different systems in place, but the tubes are empty?

Either we have not increased production, we cannot increase because China is holding back components, or everyone is hoarding as much as they can – I don’t know the reason.

Or is it that only Patriot PAC3 works well – I find that very hard to believe.

But the fact is that Russia has now found a weakness they are exploiting maximally, and Ukraine cannot counter this yet; yesterday’s attack on Kyiv had zero (0) shot down.

These days, North Korea has brought ballistic missile launchers into western Russia with a total of 120 missiles to fight targets in Ukraine.

You hear our screams, have we reached the point where we are starting to get scared?

You know what I think, we should have dug in light infantry along the Baltic border who used the summer to mine and build fortifications, but we have not done that.

Now it is the deepest August, everyone is at the cabin in the archipelago drinking rosé wine, so nothing will happen before the first meetings in September at the earliest.

A positive is that sometime in October, the rains will make the ground bearing capacity unfavorable for the attacking party, and then it depends entirely on when the frost sets in the ground after that when offensive operations can be conducted again – weather dependent.

A big reason Russia did not manage to overrun Ukraine in 2022 was because the ground did not bear, so they were locked to roads with better bearing capacity, and Ukraine could do a Sitting Bull on them where they knocked out the lead vehicles and everything stopped. The spicy part was that China probably asked them to wait until the Olympics were over so as not to spoil the optics, so we really have China to thank for Russia not winning the war early.

Wild guess that Russia has learned that lesson the hard way and hired a meteorologist part-time?

If there is an “El Nino winter,” January and February in Europe are supposed to become very cold, and then naturally the ground will bear again.

My high-risk periods were Midsummer, where the Baltics apparently take it as seriously as we do in Sweden, and then from the turn of July/August onwards when all of Europe is on vacation.

Then the danger is over sometime in October when the rains start in earnest until the ground then freezes.

I have severely underestimated Europe’s willingness to defend itself, so my previous predictions about when the danger would be over do not hold – instead, we have withdrawn units from the Baltics (USA), we have no drone weapons worth mentioning, neither anti-drone nor our own drones. Apparently, we also no longer have interceptors against ballistic missiles.

Considering that we have had 4.5 years and Putin already in 2007 in Munich told us exactly what would happen, one almost has to tip their hat to that achievement.

If you don’t see that Russia has increased the pace of the hybrid war, it’s because you don’t want to see it, and if you refuse to think about the next phase, which then becomes a twilight state and then war, you might want to ask yourself why Russia has increased the pace of the hybrid war.

Sitting on your hands and hoping for the best worked fine when Russia was only waging war against Ukraine and they refused to give up, but now they have expanded to Europe and then we have to start making difficult decisions because Ukraine is where it is and cannot come to the rescue and solve this for us.

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