French President Emmanuel Macron on Friday announced his government is working to craft a plan to protect the country from Russian hybrid threats.
After meeting with leading political figures in France, Macron warned in comments at the Élysée Palace that Moscow is expanding cyber and drone attacks across Europe in an effort, he said, is aimed at discouraging the continent from supporting Ukraine in its war against Russia, which the United States has made a renewed attempt in recent weeks to end. Macron revealed he asked his government to consider how to protect critical infrastructure, including sensitive defense industry and technology sites, from Russia, citing Moscow’s drone and cyberattacks.
“In recent weeks, the threat — particularly the Russian hybrid threat — facing Europeans and France has intensified,” Macron told reporters, revealing that France’s interior minister has also gathered with regional prefects to increase “vigilance in response to Russian hybrid attacks.”
“The intent is to intimidate us and break our effort to support Ukraine,” he said. “The result will be the exact opposite. We are not intimidated because we know that our security today and tomorrow is at stake in Ukraine.”
The development comes as Washington has similarly warned that the U.S. is vulnerable to foreign cyberwarfare and other forms of attacks.
The Department of Justice earlier this month announced charges against five Russian agents still at large for allegedly contracting for surveillance and murder-for-hire plots around the world, including in Washington, D.C., over the summer. The DOJ revealed last month that China has been hacking into federal systems, including the Senate, the Federal Reserve, NASA, and the Departments of Energy and Health and Human Services, since 2018. President Donald Trump in July said that U.S. elections are vulnerable to Russian interference, citing a National Intelligence Council Memorandum from October 2024 that stated, “We assess that some U.S. adversaries—at a minimum China, Iran, and Russia … have the technical capability to access some U.S. election-related networks and systems.”
In July, France’s Cyber Crisis Coordination Centre blamed Russia for a series of cyberespionage operations conducted for years against sensitive French infrastructure, including government ministries.
Officials said Russia’s top intelligence agency, the Federal Security Service or FSB, had conducted cyberattacks on France in incidents that “affect many of our European partners.” That month, French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot promised to summon the Russian ambassador to France over the allegations.
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“We will publicly condemn a widespread cyber campaign conducted by Russia that aimed to carry out sabotage and spying conducted against a dozen countries,” Barrot told BFM TV.
In another incident that gave Europe a headache, officials suggested Russia was behind a drone that breached Lithuania’s airspace earlier this month. The episode was concerning, as Lithuania is a NATO country, meaning such an incident could activate the alliance, which the U.S. belongs to, threatening to spill the Ukraine war into a broader conflict.