The Circumpolar Podcast - Hybrid Threats in the Arctic

In this episode of The Circumpolar, Serafima Andreeva speaks with Gabriella Gricius on hybrid threats in the Arctic. Photo: Serafima Andreeva

The Circumpolar is a podcast on Arctic geopolitics, governance, and security. Created and hosted by Serafima Andreeva, and supported by The Arctic Institute and the Fridtjof Nansen Institute. The podcast brings together leading experts from various fields of Arctic geopolitics and many Arctic and non-Arctic states to unpack key developments, challenge common misconceptions, and discuss the current dynamics of todays changing Arctic.

Will the next war be hybrid?

Gabriella Gricius, Associate Professor at the Norwegian Military Academy and Senior Fellow at The Arctic Institute, returns to The Circumpolar to talk about hybrid threats across NATO’s eastern flank, from the Barents to the Baltic to the Black Sea. The conversation starts with a definitional problem: hybrid threats sit in the gray zone between peace and war, but the term itself stretches across cable cutting, election interference, drone incursions, the shadow fleet, sabotage by criminal proxies, and disinformation. That breadth is part of the policy challenge.

Gricius argues that Russia treats these activities not as “hybrid warfare” but as a full spectrum approach where political and military aims are inseparable, and that it adapts regionally. The Barents sees a slow, mostly espionage-driven pattern shaped by Russian caution around its Kola-based nuclear deterrent. The Baltic has become a testing ground, with sharper escalation since 2022 and a dynamic mix of drones, arson, sabotage, and incursions. The Black Sea sits closest to the war in Ukraine, with high incident counts but attribution problems that make it hard to separate Russian action from spillover.

The episode pushes into harder territory: the limits of UNCLOS in dealing with the shadow fleet, the Eagle S case and the jurisdictional gap it exposed, the use of criminal proxies and Belarusian cover, and the prospect of compounding threats where states still respond to incidents one at a time. Gricius is direct on the United States: less faith than before at the political level, but operational ties with Norway and Canada remain strong, and US space-based surveillance may be the most valuable contribution to attribution in Europe.

The conversation closes on red lines, alliance cohesion, and the case for learning and adapting rather than reacting incident by incident.