Neutrality offers no shield as hybrid threats reach Ireland

Ireland’s long-standing policy of military neutrality does not insulate it from Russia’s expanding campaign of sabotage, coercion and hybrid pressure across Europe, senior analysts from the Centre for European Policy Analysis (CEPA) warned during a press briefing on Russian shadow warfare.

The discussion was shaped in part by a question from the UK Defence Journal about whether the UK is doing enough to protect its undersea infrastructure and how Ireland should think about its neutrality when hybrid activity can spill across borders, as seen during President Zelensky’s disrupted visit.

The panel’s reply was straightforward. Neutrality does not stop this kind of activity reaching Irish territory, and incidents aimed at partners can have knock on effects for states that are not involved in the conflict. Their view was that both the UK and Ireland will need quicker political decisions, clearer coordination with allies and firmer response options if they want to limit the scope for these operations to keep spreading.

Much of the discussion centred on the structural weaknesses that Russia exploits. Sam Greene argued that the key problem is governments’ inability to move quickly in recognising that an incident is hostile, determining its source and deciding what it means for national security. He said governments must shift away from treating these cases as routine policing matters and instead develop a political security process that can act at speed. “Needing to move this out of law enforcement… and into where necessary and where feasible, a national security logic,” he said. He added that deterrence fails if governments cannot shorten the lag between recognising an attack, attributing it and determining its implications, noting that the question is fundamentally one of political process.

Eitvydas Bajarūnas reinforced that deterrence depends on coordinated and predictable signalling among allies rather than improvised national steps. He used Lithuania’s experience to show how punitive actions, if taken without alignment, can prove ineffective or even counterproductive. “Whenever you do this… you should coordinate with your allies. You should coordinate with the neighbors,” he said, stressing that punitive measures must be planned with economic and societal effects in mind rather than rushed for political effect.

Both Greene and Bajarunas underlined that Russia does not view Europe as outside the conflict sparked by its full scale invasion of Ukraine. From Moscow’s perspective, Europe is a legitimate arena, regardless of whether individual states consider themselves neutral. “Russia is in the state of war with the West… from Russian perspective, it is the same war,” Greene said. That framing removes any expectation that neutrality protects Ireland from infrastructure interference, cyber activity or maritime probing.

The experts also warned that the prevailing Irish approach of treating incidents as isolated technical or criminal matters is no longer viable. Greene said outright that “we can no longer look at this as a law enforcement problem… we can no longer look at this as a nuisance.” He argued that hybrid operations target political will and societal resilience rather than infrastructure alone and therefore demand a coordinated allied response.

The UK Defence Journal understands that the panel’s consensus was clear: Ireland will need to accelerate political response mechanisms, coordinate its messaging with allies and design punitive tools that are credible and realistic if it wishes to deter further hostile activity. Neutrality, in the current security environment, offers neither protection nor leverage.

A broader analysis of Russia’s shadow warfare strategy, including the patterns and methods highlighted during the briefing, can be found in the report discussed by the panel, available here.