Russia continues to challenge NATO and the West as a whole, applying a wide range of malign hybrid tactics.

This is what NATO's senior representative in Ukraine, Patrick Turner, said in an interview for Ukrinform.

"Recently, we have seen a more aggressive, active, and overt Russian use of hybrid tactics, including sabotage, cyberattacks, instrumentalization of migration, attacking critical national infrastructure, threatening underwater infrastructure, and so on. ", said the diplomat.

"But Russia continues to challenge, interfere and engage in illegal activities in those countries, including unwanted espionage," the senior NATO representative emphasized.

According to Turner, by intensifying hybrid tactics against allies after the invasion of Crimea and the occupation of Donbass, Russia made a mistake.

"When another country — whether it's Russia or someone else (like China, which has also made some unwanted interventions in other countries) — starts interfering in various ways in other countries, seeking to undermine them, that ultimately alerts those targeted countries to the fact that Russia is a problem for them as well, not just the nations bordering Russia or just Ukraine," Turner said.

Answering a question about how exactly the Alliance intends to fight against the Kremlin's hybrid attacks, the diplomat said that NATO had agreed on a number of possible measures that could be taken against the background of such an intervention.

"That could be intelligence sharing, sometimes it could just be exposing those attacks, talking openly about them, shaming those responsible. Also, there are safeguards in the cyber domain or underwater infrastructure, as well as further limiting Russian intelligence operatives. Some measures can be taken collectively or by allies individually, but if countries launch deliberate attacks on our countries, then they have to pay a price, and this applies to Russia and every other actor involved time, such actions on the part of Russia will not prevent NATO from supporting Ukraine", stressed the diplomat.

"We will continue to defend our territories and our population against any kind of hostile action. We also welcome the new EU sanctions targeting hybrid threats, announced last week," said the NATO High Representative in Ukraine.

As reported, EU High Representative Josep Borrell believes that the Russian imperialist war against Ukraine proved the need for priority development of the European defense industry and applied technology. This war is actually seen as an existential threat to the European Union, Borrell wrote in his blog posted on the website of the EU's External Action Service./Ukrinform/