Russia will close German cultural centers on its territory, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov announced Thursday, a retaliatory move that underscores the deepening rift between Moscow and European nations backing Ukraine against the Kremlin’s 4 1/2-year-old invasion.

Lavrov’s declaration followed Berlin’s accusation that Moscow was behind an attempted drone attack at Leipzig/Halle Airport on Aug. 4. An explosives-laden drone was discovered near a Ukrainian aircraft at the facility — a major international freight hub used to channel support to Ukraine — and was later defused.

Earlier on Thursday in Munich, several incendiary devices were thrown at a construction site close to a building housing a number of companies, including firms from the defense sector, according to the Bavarian State Criminal Police Office. Police said a brief fire broke out but caused no significant damage, and investigators suspect one of the companies in the area was the intended target. Two Bulgarian nationals were arrested, though their suspected involvement has not been confirmed, police said.

Western officials have repeatedly accused Moscow of waging a campaign of sabotage and disruption on their soil aimed at undermining support for Ukraine and destabilizing European nations — allegations Russia denies. Germany says it has become a “daily target” of the Kremlin’s hybrid campaign, and on Wednesday announced the closure of both the Russian Consulate in Bonn and the Russian House cultural center in the German capital.

Lavrov countered that Goethe-Institut cultural centers in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Yekaterinburg would be shut, saying any other response would show a lack of “self-respect” on Russia’s part. The Goethe-Institut, Germany’s state-backed cultural agency, has for decades been a principal instrument of Berlin’s cultural diplomacy abroad, running language courses and cultural programs worldwide. Speaking at an economic forum in the Far East city of Vladivostok, he said Germany “could not have failed to understand” that closing the Berlin center would “signify the end of their cultural presence in Russia.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Berlin is trying to divert attention from its own failings and voter discontent, and asserted that any proof being offered “has been planted.”

Europe increasingly sees itself as the target of what it calls Russian hybrid attacks — combining cyberwarfare and disinformation with a conventional military threat — and each side accuses the other of state terrorism. The tensions have persisted for months and evolved into a major foreign and defense policy challenge for European Union members. Putin is testing the West with tactics that fall “just below the threshold of war” and is determined to “harass NATO members,” the head of Britain’s MI6 intelligence agency said last year.

European Countries Move to Counter the Russian Threat

After Germany’s allegations, Poland, Denmark, Finland, the U.K., the Czech Republic and Lithuania have all summoned Russian diplomats stationed on their territory.

In Norway, authorities on Wednesday seized a Russian vessel in the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard at the request of Ukraine’s state-owned Naftogaz energy group. A Norwegian court ordered the seizure as part of Naftogaz’s efforts to recover a $4.22 billion arbitration award stemming from Russia’s 2014 illegal annexation of Crimea and its seizure of Ukrainian energy assets, including gas fields and pipelines. After Moscow refused to pay the 2023 award, Naftogaz petitioned national courts for orders to seize Russian commercial assets.

Putin on Thursday compared the seizure to “state terrorism,” and Russia’s Foreign Ministry summoned Norway’s ambassador to Moscow, Heidi Olufsen, to protest the move. The ministry said the vessel belongs to the state weather and environmental monitoring agency and had been carrying workers, scientists and cargo to Russian settlements on one of Svalbard’s islands, adding that Moscow “will seek to lift the vessel’s arrest.”

In Finland, more than 2,000 people took part Thursday in the largest civil defense exercise held in Europe since the end of World War II. Among the scenarios envisioned were missile strikes from neighboring Russia. Finland, which shares a roughly 1,340-kilometer border with Russia, joined NATO in 2023, ending decades of military nonalignment after Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

EU Weighs Further Responses

EU ministers met Wednesday to consider how best to respond to the attempted drone attack, but struggled to identify new measures that would not require military means. The bloc has already imposed almost two dozen sanctions packages on Russia over the war, targeting more than 3,000 officials, oligarchs and entities including banks, energy companies and drone manufacturers. The difficulty in finding fresh options reflects how extensively existing tools have already been deployed against Russia’s economy and individuals close to the Kremlin.

One senior EU official suggested the bloc’s anti-terrorism procedures could be put to effective use. “If we list individuals as terrorists, we can deploy a range of instruments to actually target those individuals and to track them, all their activities and people associated with those individuals,” said EU Counter-Terrorism Coordinator Bartjan Wegter.

Wegter told The Associated Press that EU methods for combating terrorist financing and money laundering, as well as boosting the resilience of infrastructure such as airports, could be applied to the current challenge.

“It is a very worrying development,” Wegter said of the failed Leipzig drone attack, though he noted that “it is not new what we’re seeing.” Both Russia and Iran have used hybrid warfare methods before, he said. “They’re actually deploying terrorist tactics” intended to “destabilize our society,” Wegter added.

Denmark Warns of Imminent Russian Sabotage Plans

Danish security services are warning that Russian acts of sabotage against the country’s defense industry may be imminent. Intelligence services have detected signs of specific Russian planning for sabotage operations in Denmark, Emil Græsholm, head of counterintelligence at the national security and intelligence service PET, told the Berlingske newspaper. The primary targets are defense industry companies, especially those involved in delivering military components to Ukraine, he said.

Russian Ambassador Vladimir Barbin said PET has presented no concrete evidence that Moscow was preparing sabotage in Denmark, arguing that Græsholm’s remarks amounted to an acknowledgment of Denmark’s involvement in Ukraine. He added that turning Danish territory into a production and logistics base for the Ukrainian military posed a security risk to Denmark itself.

Italy’s Defense Minister Guido Crosetto told AP on Wednesday that the German airport incident was “a very serious act that could have very grave consequences.” But he said the threats are not discouraging Italy from further supporting Kyiv as Rome weighs whether to send SAMP/T air defense batteries. As in other Western countries, he said, limited weapons production capacity is constraining efforts to supply more to Ukraine — a bottleneck European governments have been scrambling to address as the war grinds on.

Original source: Fortune. Follow the AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at