New Actor: Rubio Warns of Hybrid Attacks From Russia

At the UN in New York, US secretary of state Marco Rubio warned the war in Ukraine could spread through hybrid attacks or a misstep that spirals into combat. “Some pilot went the wrong way and all of a sudden you’ve got active combat,” he said, adding that the US is flagging incidents with multiple allies and has raised them in meetings after he spoke with Russia’s Sergei Lavrov on the sidelines of the General Assembly.

European leaders moved to harden defenses against hybrid operations, meaning covert sabotage, drones and cyber attacks. France ordered plans to protect critical infrastructure and sensitive defense-industry sites, while in the UK the prime minister set up a new unit to counter “industrial‑scale” Russian disinformation and Britain’s navy chief warned Moscow is probing undersea cables.

Warnings have been paired with concrete incidents. An Italian fighter on a NATO mission shot down a drone over Lithuania on September 15 after it entered from Belarus, in what authorities said was the first such downing there and likely involved explosives. Earlier this month the UK summoned a senior Russian diplomat over an attempted drone strike on a German airport used to ship supplies to Ukraine.

AI-synthesized from multiple reported sources