Assuming the Russia speculation is correct, what is their motivation? General chaos in Europe? It seems pretty reckless knowing this would be ascribed to them, and I don't see how they benefit here.
We're about to hit a series of important elections as well (Spain, France, I think Germany soon as well?), hybrid warfare is supposed to influence in favor of extreme parties.
It's a major issue. On paper NATO can mop the floor with Russia even without the US backing, but nobody in a first world country wants to die in a ditch, and the endgame there is also unclear because Russia can play the nuke card if they're too threatened.
I think that was true a two years ago, but Russia has been forced to adapt to the drone warfare of Ukraine as much as Ukraine has been forced to adapt to the drone warfare of Russia.
I suspect that right now, both Ukraine and Russia have independently got armed forces which could wipe the floor with the rest of non-naval NATO forces. And I'm only giving a "possibly" for the naval exception because of their limited production rate of long-rage drones so saturation attacks may be harder, not that it's impossible: we can already see the US navy being forced into a much longer distance stand-off range vs. Iran.
That said, I'm getting this position mainly from watching Anders Puck Nielsen videos, so take with the usual scepticism/pinch of salt for "internet commenter/armchair general".
It's a perfect 'get out of jail free' card for any sufficiently complicated screw up.
This isn't to excuse Russia's abhorrent conduct elsewhere either, I'm just not entirely convinced by the boogeyman lazy journalists seem perfectly content to keep trotting out.
Though the US did most of the heavy lifting on undermining NATO for Russia already, so these grey zone attacks are just building on that.