{"id":520140,"date":"2026-08-07T20:06:47","date_gmt":"2026-08-08T00:06:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/deultimominuto.net\/en\/uncategorized\/russia-and-the-war-of-cheap-drones-against-european-aviation\/"},"modified":"2026-08-07T20:06:47","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T00:06:47","slug":"russia-and-the-war-of-cheap-drones-against-european-aviation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/deultimominuto.com\/en\/uncategorized\/russia-and-the-war-of-cheap-drones-against-european-aviation\/","title":{"rendered":"Russia and the war of cheap drones against European aviation"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A catastrophe with several deaths could have been inches away from occurring in the German<\/a> city of Leipzig<\/strong>. A drone loaded with professional explosives appeared Tuesday night inside the airport, hovering at a low altitude between two Ukrainian Antonov An-124s, at one of NATO’s major logistics hubs in Europe. The detonator was broken and the device did not explode. The German Federal Prosecutor’s Office has taken over the case as a possible attack against the country’s security, and Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt<\/strong> speaks of a “new level of danger”<\/strong>.

The device carried an explosive package about the size of a fist. A striking aspect: it had been modified to evade electronic detection, which rules out amateur use or an act by pranksters. Cameras indicate that it had been inside the premises for hours without being located. A police report cited by German media initially indicated that one of the nearby Antonovs was carrying ammunition. That point is not among the facts publicly confirmed by the Federal Prosecutor’s Office, but it is true that Antonov Airlines uses Leipzig as a European base and the airport houses the SALIS heavy air transport system for NATO allies.

The discovery temporarily shut down traffic. A DHL freighter from Marseille had to abort its approach and collided with another object, probably a second drone, before landing in Hanover with minor damage. Germany has not officially attributed the operation to Russia, but points in that direction: Dobrindt speaks of a “professional hybrid threat scenario” and contemplates the involvement of a foreign power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We recommend reading:US Senate approves new sanctions against Russia with tariffs of up to 500%<\/a>
<\/strong>
“Not always, but sometimes it is Russia. You have to think about who benefits from what is happening. Look at the big picture,” explains Margarita Seselgyte, director of the Institute of International Relations and Political Science at Vilnius University, to EL MUNDO. “Moscow benefits because it creates chaos in Europe, doubts about the State, it creates anxiety. <\/strong>And the grand plan is to create more disagreements, kill European unity and the appetite to help Ukraine.”

The physical target could be one of the Antonovs. But the strategic goal was greater: to demonstrate that the European rear can be reached, to paralyze critical infrastructure, to measure the reaction of defenses, and to multiply the cost of protecting airports. As Seselgyte points out, “hybrid warfare is very useful<\/strong>, it has low costs, you don’t have to succeed everywhere. It is very similar to terrorism<\/strong>, the goal is to affect those who make decisions.” According to an analysis published in July by Carnegie Europe, Russian military and economic difficulties may increase the incentive to resort to cheap, deniable actions capable of testing NATO’s limits, exploiting internal hesitations, and eroding support for Kyiv.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The jolt in the Baltics<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania<\/strong> have already seen these techniques reach aviation. In 2024, Finnair suspended its flights to Tartu for a month after two planes returned to Helsinki, unable to complete their approach due to GPS interference. In 2026, several drones entered Baltic airspace from Russia<\/strong>: two crashed in Latvia in May, and a Romanian F-16<\/strong> shot down another over Estonia during intense electronic warfare. Vilnius has closed its airport more than ten times since October 2025 due to balloons arriving from Belarus.

The most direct precedent originated in Lithuania. In July 2024, four packages containing explosive-incendiary devices<\/strong> left Vilnius. One ignited in Leipzig shortly before being loaded onto a DHL plane bound for the United Kingdom; another burned in a truck in Poland; a third caught fire at a DHL warehouse in Birmingham. The European investigation has identified 22 suspects and maintains that they acted on behalf of Russian military intelligence. The inquiries point to a trial run for future attacks against<\/strong> cargo flights to the United States and Canada.<\/strong>

That is where the value of the drone lies in hybrid warfare<\/strong>: the attacker does not need to succeed every time; they need to force the adversary to protect everything. A civilian airport cannot treat every unknown flight as if it were a military offensive, nor can it assume it is just an amateur. Carnegie analyst Maxim Beznosiuk warns of a campaign aimed at “testing allied thresholds and fracturing European resolve.” Seselgyte summarizes it in the triad of creating “chaos, anxiety, and disagreement until the appetite to help Ukraine is reduced.”<\/strong> In Leipzig, the drone did not even need to explode to achieve a part of that effect.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A catastrophe with several deaths could have been inches away from occurring in the German city of Leipzig. A drone loaded with professional explosives appeared Tuesday night inside the airport, hovering at a low altitude between two Ukrainian Antonov An-124s, at one of NATO’s major logistics hubs in Europe. The detonator was broken and the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":133556,"featured_media":520141,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_members_access_role":[],"_members_access_error":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-520140","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/phj1q1-2bjm","jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/deultimominuto.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/08\/17861119993076.webp","dum_api":{"author_name":"Yerandi Santana","author_image":"https:\/\/deultimominuto.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/cropped-WhatsApp-Image-2026-02-13-at-5.35.07-PM-96x96.jpeg","categories_name":["Uncategorized"],"featured_media_url":"https:\/\/cdn.deultimominuto.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/08\/17861119993076.webp"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/deultimominuto.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/520140","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/deultimominuto.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/deultimominuto.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deultimominuto.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/133556"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deultimominuto.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=520140"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/deultimominuto.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/520140\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deultimominuto.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/520141"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/deultimominuto.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=520140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deultimominuto.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=520140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deultimominuto.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=520140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}