Estonia blames Russia for arson at defence company supplying Ukraine

In August alone, Russia was either accused or suspected of the Leipzig airport attack in Germany, a major fire at a warehouse of a defence firm in Bulgaria, a large explosion at a munitions factory outside Rome in Italy, an attempted arson attack on a Ukrainian-owned drone manufacturer in Slovakia, and two suspicious fires in Poland - the latest in a country which has reported several such attacks.Hybrid warfare or hybrid attacks are loose terms that tend to describe non-military methods, for example cyber-attacks, sabotage or misinformation, designed to exert pressure and destabilise an adversary.Estonia's internal security service, known as Kapo, said Russia was continuing to look for further opportunities for either sabotage or other hostile acts. "Individuals recruited for such operations may be misled or manipulated and may be given false or fabricated justifications for their actions in an effort to conceal the involvement of the Russian state," Kapo head Palloson said.Russia always denies involvement in such attacks despite growing evidence to the contrary.On Tuesday, President Vladimir Putin's spokesman said "such statements are baseless, ill-considered, have absolutely no relation to reality, and lack any form of reasoning". "We cannot and will not take such statements seriously," Dmitry Peskov said.