"INCURSIONS" · 총 20건
필터 보기현재 지수
49.5
0 = 부정 우세
50 = 중립
100 = 긍정 우세
최근 7일 기준 85,558건을 분석한 결과, 뉴스 심리지수는 49.5(균형)입니다. 긍정 10,531건(12.3%)·중립 61,768건(72.2%)·부정 13,259건(15.5%)이며, 중립 비중이 뚜렷하게 높습니다. 성향 지수는 종합 20.8(보수 경향)입니다.
"The forces understand that the only way for us to succeed is to hunt the drone operators and kill them," the senior officer said.
A spate of drone incursions fuels anxieties about a possible military conflict with Russia.
No wonder Donald Trump swore at his supposed friend and ally Benjamin Netanyahu last week. Within days of that June 1 phone call, Israel and Iran were back on track for the kind of military escalation that can no longer be explained away as a ceasefire breach, presenting a potentially fatal threat to the US president’s attempts to end the war.The cause of their dispute is, on the surface, simple. Israel says the April ceasefire between Tehran and Washington did not cover Lebanon, and that its troops would therefore go on fighting Hezbollah so long as the Shiite group posed a security threat to Israeli’s northern border communities. Iran says the deal did cover Lebanon, which is just another front in the same war — and of course it is.It’s precisely because it sees Hezbollah as a tool of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps that Israel wanted the war in the first place. Israelis correctly blamed the IRGC for having orchestrated an entire proxy network of militias — from the Houthis in Yemen, to Hamas in Gaza, to Hezbollah in Lebanon — against the world’s only Jewish state. That Iranian strategy contributed directly to the atrocities of Oct. 7, 2023.Also Read: US Army Apache helicopter crashes near Strait of Hormuz, says reportOnly such an Iran-controlled or -inspired network can explain why Hezbollah opened a second front against the Israelis on Oct. 8 of that year, long before it could be described as a response to Israeli military excesses against Palestinian civilians in Gaza. Likewise that Hezbollah would join in the fight again when the US and Israel attacked Iran, in February. And it’s why the Houthis chose this weekend to lob a missile at Israel and announce they were closing the Bab al-Mandeb Strait to Israeli shipping.These last Houthi gestures were largely symbolic. Yet the collective message Tehran seeks to deliver is clear; it is that reports of the death of its so-called Axis of Resistance have been greatly exaggerated. The latest bout of escalation has notably been directed at Israel alone, serving to drive a wedge between it and the US, as it exposed the point at which their interests divide.Tehran on Monday appeared to want to draw a line under spiraling tit-for-tat air and missile strikes, saying it would refrain from further attacks — so long as Israel doesn’t bomb Hezbollah’s strongholds in Beirut. Netanyahu now faces a painful dilemma: Should he obey Trump by limiting his campaign against Hezbollah in the face of Iranian threats, thus granting them a level of impunity and deterrent power? Or should he ignore Trump and unleash the Israel Defense Forces on the Lebanese capital?Also Read: US carriers spent $6. 5B on fuel in April; global profit forecast is cut nearly in halfTehran’s new leaders understand this. No doubt they see it as a win-win for themselves. They know, too, that Hezbollah has recovered some of the military utility it had lost before the war after acquiring remote-controlled first-person view drones that the IDF seem ill-prepared to counter.This would present a genuine predicament to any Israeli government, because popular support for “finishing the job” in Lebanon is high. Netanyahu faces anger from across the political spectrum over his apparent submission of Israeli security interests to American ones.But this isn’t any Israeli government. Not every Israeli leader would have overseen a decades-long security policy that prioritized the suppression of the Palestinian Authority over Hamas, allowing the terrorist group to succeed beyond its wildest dreams on Oct. 7. Nor would every Israeli leader have refused to draw up a political strategy to accompany the use of force that followed in Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon — despite being coerced by Trump into recent talks with its central government.As the former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak put it in an article for the liberal Haaretz newspaper on Monday, the story being sold to Israelis — that the IDF could eradicate Hezbollah once and for all if only its hands weren’t tied — is “a dangerous illusion.” The history of previous, painful failed incursions into Lebanon says as much.Nor would every Israeli leader have misled Trump into believing (against the advice of the US military and intelligence community) that assassinating Iran’s supreme leader would swiftly precipitate a collapse of the Islamic Republic as a whole. Nor might they have allowed their country to become quite as diplomatically isolated as it has.It is these strategic failures, amid undoubted military success, that have left Israel with few good options. Netanyahu can hope for a rapid collapse of the regime in Tehran to resolve his dilemma, but that’s unlikely. Alternatively, he can try to persuade the US to join in a long-term mow-the-lawn policy to keep Iran weak, amounting to a forever war. This, too, seems unlikely — or at least not in the interests of the US, its Gulf allies or the global economy.Failing one of these minor miracles, the risk of Israel being forced to accept a peace deal that leaves an enraged and emboldened Islamic Republic in place is real. No doubt Netanyahu, like Trump, believed in February that a short, victorious Iranian war might salvage his dimming political prospects, ahead of the Israeli elections due by October. That was a bad bet.
A series of drone incursions into countries neighboring Ukraine and Russia is fueling concern that their four-and-a-half year war could spread.
A court is set to deliver its verdict this week on former President Yoon Suk Yeol's charges of ordering drone incursions into Pyongyang during his tenure as a pretext to declare martial law, officials said Sunday. The Seoul Central District Court will hold the hearing for Yoon on Friday on charges that include benefiting the enemy and abuse of authority, according to judicial officials. Yoon is accused of ordering the South Korean military to fly drones over Pyongyang in October 2024 as a pretex
Russian incursions into UK defences risk crossing a line, Chief of the Defence Staff Sir Richard Knighton tells the BBC.
PARIS, June 4 - French warplanes were scrambled 11 times over the last week as part of NATO's Baltic Air Policing Mission, France's armed forces spokesperson said on Thursday, describing the incursions as a higher-than-usual number of \"provocations\".
Qatar and seven other countries urged an end to Israeli settler incursions into Al-Aqsa Mosque, warning that repeated violations threaten regional stability and peace efforts. Qatar joined seven Muslim-majority countries… (The post Qatar joins Arab, Islamic states in condemning Al-Aqsa incursions is from Doha News | Qatar.)
Pakistan, along with seven other Muslim countries, on Tuesday condemned the “continued incursions by extremist Israeli settlers into Al Aqsa Mosque” in the strongest terms, calling for an immediate cessation of all such provocative practices. According to a joint statement released by the Foreign Office (FO), the foreign ministers of Pakistan, Egypt, Turkiye, Indonesia, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates condemned “in the strongest terms the continued incursions by extremist Israeli settlers, into Al Aqsa Mosque under the protection of the Israeli forces, as well as the raising of the Israeli flag within its courtyards”. “They stress that these provocative and unacceptable actions constitute a flagrant violation of international law, the relevant United Nations resolutions, and the historical and legal status quo at the holy sites in occupied East Jerusalem. The FO added that the foreign ministers reaffirmed their “categorical rejection” of any attempts to alter the historical and legal status quo in Jerusalem and its Islamic and Christian holy sites, and stressed the preservation of this status quo, while recognising the special role of the historical Hashemite custodianship in this regard. “The foreign ministers reiterated that the entire area of Al Aqsa Mosque, which amounts to 144 dunams, is a place of worship exclusively for Muslims, and that the Jerusalem Endowments and Al-Aqsa Mosque Affairs Department, affiliated with the Jordanian Ministry of Awqaf and Islamic Affairs, is the legal entity with exclusive jurisdiction to administer the affairs of the blessed Al Aqsa Mosque and to regulate entry thereto.” Islamabad further stated that the foreign ministers of the aforementioned countries held Israeli authorities responsible for halting these escalatory actions and warned that “repeated Israeli violations exacerbate tensions, fuel instability and extremism, undermine international efforts to achieve peace, and constitute a clear breach of Israel’s obligations under international law”. The Muslim and Arab countries called for an immediate cessation of all such “Israeli illegal and provocative practices” and reaffirmed the need to respect the historical and legal status quo at Al Aqsa Mosque in its entirety, the FO said. “The foreign ministers reaffirm their unwavering solidarity with the Palestinian people and their steadfast support for the realisation of their legitimate and inalienable national rights, foremost among them their right to self-determination and the realisation of an independent and sovereign Palestinian State on the 1967 lines, with East Jerusalem as its capital,” the FO said. They further reaffirmed their support for all efforts aimed at ending the Israeli occupation and achieving a just, lasting, and comprehensive peace based on the two-state solution in accordance with international law, the relevant UN resolutions, and the Arab Peace Initiative, the FO concluded. Earlier in April, Pakistan condemned in “strongest terms” the storming of the Al Aqsa Mosque compound and the raising of Israel’s flag in its courtyard, terming the acts “reprehensible”. The condemnation issued by the FO said “these reprehensible acts constitute a blatant violation of international law, as well as of the sanctity and inviolability of the holy site. Such provocative steps also risk further escalating tensions in the region”.
Countries: Ukraine, Belarus, Bulgaria, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Poland, Romania, Türkiye Source: UN Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs Drone strike in Romania underscores growing risk of spillover of the war in Ukraine, Security Council hears Madam President, Excellencies, Only last week, the Secretary-General alerted this Council to the serious risk of further escalation of the war in Ukraine, including to the broader region. Last Friday, a dangerous incident crystallized our oft-stated warnings about potential spillover of the war. On the night of 28 to 29 May, an armed drone exploded on the top floor of a ten-story residential building in the eastern Romanian city of Galaţi, injuring two residents, a woman and a child. This was not the first reported breach of Romanian airspace by an armed drone since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. However, it was the first time such an incident resulted in casualties. The United Nations does not have any additional information on the strike in Galaţi. But Friday’s incident came on the heels of a worrying trend of drone incursions into the airspaces and territorial waters of countries bordering either Ukraine or the Russian Federation. Over the past 12 months, such incidents have been reported by the authorities in Moldova, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Finland, Poland, Kazakhstan, and Belarus, as well as in countries in the wider region - Bulgaria, Greece and Türkiye. Madam President, The United Nations strongly condemns all attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure. Such attacks, wherever they occur, violate international humanitarian law and must cease immediately. Civilians must be protected at all times. Madam President, The Galaţi incident comes amidst a sharp escalation of large-scale missile and drone attacks by the armed forces of the Russian Federation on Ukrainian towns and cities, resulting in ever worsening toll of civilian casualties and destruction of civilian infrastructure. There has also been a marked increase in Ukrainian attacks on military, energy and industrial infrastructure in the Russian Federation, which have reportedly resulted in a growing number of civilian casualties and damage to civilian infrastructure. As the Secretary-General stressed last week, the dangerous trajectory of escalation and intensification that we are witnessing today, risks getting out of control. The current course must change. Madam President, The risk of miscalculation is particularly dangerous for the safety of nuclear facilities. Such risk has only increased in recent days. On 30 May, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was informed by the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant that a drone struck a turbine building at the site, reportedly causing a hole in its wall. This was the first such attack within the Plant’s perimeter since April 2024. Yesterday, the IAEA team at the site observed damage to the exterior of a turbine building, noting that it appeared consistent with the impact of a drone. We echo the deep concern expressed by the IAEA Director-General over this serious incident that endangered key nuclear safety principles. Attacks on nuclear sites are reckless and unacceptable. They must stop immediately to prevent any risk of a nuclear accident. Madam President, Amidst heightened tensions, it is incumbent on all concerned to act responsibly and to refrain from any action that could destabilize the situation further. As the Secretary-General emphasized last week, we urgently need immediate steps towards de-escalation, leading to a full and unconditional ceasefire. To that end, we urge dialogue and negotiations to resume at once. Diplomacy needs to be given a meaningful chance to create conditions for achieving peace in Ukraine. A peace that is just, lasting and comprehensive - in line with the Charter of the United Nations, international law, and relevant UN resolutions. A peace that contributes to a more stable regional and international environment. The United Nations will continue to fully support all meaningful efforts to that end. Thank you.
TWENTY-eight years after the nuclear tests at Chagai, the strategic environment in South Asia has shifted dramatically. The assumptions that shaped Pakistan’s deterrence posture in 1998, and the paradigm shift from ‘Credible Minimum Deterrence’ to ‘Full-Spectrum Deterrence’, were rooted in visions of a conventional invasion, mass mobilisation and large-scale armoured thrusts across the border. In contrast, the modern battlefield looks very different today. The war in Ukraine, the Azerbaijan-Armenia conflict, the Iran-US/Israel war and — most importantly for Pakistan — the May 2025 India-Pakistan conflict, have demonstrated how precision missiles, armed drones, electronic warfare, satellite enabled surveillance and integrated air defence systems are reshaping escalation dynamics. Speaking over the weekend at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, Lt Gen Nauman Zakaria — commander of the 1 Corps who was introduced at the conference as the commander of the newly-raised Army Rocket Force Command — warned that emerging technologies were creating “new vulnerabilities… risk of miscalculation… [and a] compression of decision making timelines” that have altered “the nature of interstate conflict and strategic deterrence”. Raising of new rocket force signals a significant strategic shift, as precision weapons compress decision timelines and blur the line between conventional and nuclear signalling in South Asia This echoes what many view as the most important lesson from the May 2025 conflict: it was not that nuclear weapons failed; rather that they worked, but only in a limited sense. They prevented full-scale war, but did not stop sustained military confrontation involving missiles, drones, air operations, electronic disruption and naval signalling under the nuclear shadow. Reflecting on the May 2025 conflict, Lt Gen Zakaria said Pakistan’s response had “effectively debunked the notion of space for war in South Asia”. Historically, Pakistan’s deterrence posture has adapted to shifts in Indian military doctrine. ‘Credible Minimum Deterrence’ gave way to ‘Full-Spectrum Deterrence’ after India developed the ‘Cold Start’ concept, prompting Islamabad to lower the nuclear threshold through systems such as Nasr. But while Pakistan adjusted to the threat of limited ground incursions, India moved towards precision strikes, drones and standoff capabilities, as seen in Balakot in 2019, and the May 2025 conflict. Subsequent events showed that even the “quid-pro-quo plus” approach adopted after 2016, which sought to impose higher costs on Indian military action, has not fully denied New Delhi room for limited operations below the level of full scale war. To put it simply, India continues to look for ways to apply military pressure without triggering the nuclear escalation ladder. Here, Pakistan now faces an important doctrinal question. While nuclear weapons remain the ultimate guarantor against existential threats, they are no longer the only instruments available for imposing costs or shaping an adversary’s behaviour during a crisis. Pakistani strategists appear to recognise this shift. Prof Dr Adil Sultan, who is dean at the Faculty of Aerospace and Strategic Studies at Air University, argued that the impact of emerging technologies and the lessons of the May 2025 conflict highlight the need to “reconceptualise” existing notions of strategic stability. The creation of the Army Rocket Force Command is perhaps the clearest indication that Rawalpindi is building a stronger conventional deterrent layer. Lt Gen Zakaria has been emphatic that the force is “a strictly conventional force” with a command structure entirely separate from Pakistan’s nuclear forces. Moreover, the modernisation of systems like the Fatah missile series — whose fourth iteration was test-fired a fortnight ago — and efforts to improve precision strike capabilities clearly show that conventional missile forces are now being viewed not merely as battlefield assets, but rather strategic instruments in and of themselves. Dr Rabia Akhtar, a visiting fellow of the Harvard Kennedy School-based Project on Managing the Atom, sees the creation of the National Strategic Command and Rocket Force Command as recognition that “conventional deterrence is becoming increasingly important” and could provide decision makers “a wider range of conventional response options” before reaching the nuclear threshold. The reasoning is straightforward. If precision conventional systems can deliver calibrated but meaningful military effects, they reduce the requirement for early nuclear signalling and raise the practical threshold for nuclear use. It also means doctrines framed around tactical nuclear use for battlefield denial may no longer correspond fully to the realities of the evolving battlespace. Pakistan, therefore, may need to reconsider whether the existing formulation of ‘Full-Spectrum Deterrence’, or for that matter, the “quid-pro-quo plus” approach still reflects the strategic environment of 2026 or whether parts of it belong more to the threat perceptions of the mid-2000s. Ambassador Zamir Akram, an adviser to the Strategic Plans Division, noted: “Space for conventional warfare has increased and raised the nuclear threshold”. Yet, he also cautioned that new technologies have created greater “entanglement of conventional and strategic weapons”, making escalation faster and harder to control. The argument that conventional deterrence needs to be given greater importance does not suggest abandoning nuclear deterrence or pursuing unrealistic conventional parity with India. Indeed, Pakistan’s nuclear capability remains indispensable as the ultimate safeguard against existential coercion, but there is a growing case for recalibrating the relationship between nuclear and conventional deterrence. One reason is the growing danger of ambiguity in a battlefield increasingly shaped by speed, automation and dual capable systems. Modern warfare compresses timelines, blurs signalling and increases the risk of misreading intentions. Pakistan’s traditional policy of strategic ambiguity served an important purpose when the objective was to create uncertainty in the adversary’s calculations. Syed Ali Zia Jaffery, deputy director at the University of Lahore’s Centre for Security, Strategy and Policy Research, argued that while “calculated strategic ambiguity is still a critical part of deterrence”, there is also a need for “more emphasis” on strengthening conventional deterrence. “It would act as a clear signal that Pakistan will counter India’s efforts to create a new normal in South Asia. While nuclear deterrence has delivered what it is expected and designed to do, the past two crises underscore the significance of the other planks of deterrence,” Jaffery maintained. The May 2025 conflict demonstrated that limited war under the nuclear shadow is now a practical reality rather than a theoretical possibility. One implication is that Pakistan may require a more carefully layered deterrence architecture in which strong conventional capabilities form the first line of deterrence, while nuclear forces remain the ultimate backstop against existential threats. Published in Dawn, June 1st, 2026
Le cessez-le-feu ne cesse d’être bafoué par des incursions et des bombardements meurtriers de Tsahal sur le sol libanais, qui permettent aux Israéliens de grignoter et occuper toujours plus de territoires dans le sud du pays.
The Russian drone exploded on the roof of a residential building in Galati, a city located near Ukraine. Bucharest said the incursion should not be seen as an 'attack on Romania.'
A Russian drone struck an apartment building in NATO-member Romania early Friday, wounding two people in the latest spillover from the war in Ukraine and prompting strong condemnation from the Atlantic alliance and the European Union. NATO-member states bordering Ukraine or Russia, including Romania, Latvia, Estonia and Poland are increasingly exposed to incursions into their territory by drones from both warring sides. FRANCE 24's International Affairs Editor Gulliver Cragg reports from Kyiv, Ukraine.
Romania's defense ministry announced on Friday morning that a Russian drone had struck a residential building, injuring two people. Although dozens of drone incursions have been detected in Romania since the start of the Russian offensive in Ukraine in 2022, this incident was the first time one had hit a residential building.
RIGA, May 28 - Latvia's parliament on Thursday approved the formation of a new government, making centre-right opposition lawmaker Andris Kulbergs prime minister ahead of an October election, after recent drone incursions that brought down the ruling coalition.
The airspace incursions have occurred as Ukraine uses exploding drones to hit Russian Baltic ports that handle nearly 40% of national oil and gas exports.
May 27 - Military drones straying into the airspace of Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are stoking concerns that the war in Ukraine is spilling over into NATO's northern borders with Russia.
Ursula von der Leyen visiting Lithuania amid drone incursions as diplomats are called over Russian requests for envoys to leave the Ukrainian capital Back to Ukraine, the EU has summoned Russia’s top diplomat in Brussels over Russian warnings telling foreigners and diplomats to leave Kyiv amid planned new strikes on the Ukrainian capital. EU’s foreign policy spokesperson Anitta Hipper said on X: “[Russian] threat to foreign citizens & diplomats to leave Kyiv is an unacceptable escalation. @eu_eeas summoned the Chargé d’Affairs, calling to stop hitting civilians & [Russia] to engage in genuine peace talks starting with a full and unconditional ceasefire. @EUDelegationUA stays in Kyiv.” “[The threat] shows once more, actually, one thing that we already knew, that Russia is absolutely not interested in any peace and has a total disregard for all the efforts towards the peace.” Continue reading...
“Why are you here?” Fabrizio Pilo, an electrical engineer, asks me as we sit in an outdoor café near his home in Cagliari, an ancient city on the island of Sardinia. It’s a fair question. I’m a journalist from the United States. I’d just stepped off my flight 2 hours prior and come straight to this meeting, suitcase still stowed in my rental car. I’m here to see three intriguing new energy projects under development in Sardinia. I’d heard there’s strong public resistance to renewable energy, and I want to understand why that is. I tell Pilo, who is vice rector for innovation at the University of Cagliari, that I hope he’ll share some insights before I head out on a reporting trip across the island. (My answer seems to satisfy him, and he kindly gives me an hour of his time). This won’t be the first time that I’m asked to explain my presence on the island. I’d expected it, to some extent; I’m a foreign journalist poking around, after all. What I didn’t expect was the depth of Sardinians’ distrust, not just of journalists, but of any outsider, particularly ones with authority. Over the last few years, developers of wind and solar projects, most of whom aren’t from here, have been absorbing the bulk of this smoldering, communal wariness. Activists Maria Grazia Demontis [left] and Alberto Sala, photographed inside the archaeological monument Giants’ Tomb of Pascarédda, have worked to stop the construction of wind farms by organizing protests and taking legal actions through their organization Gallura Coordination. Luigi Avantaggiato In fact, the resistance is so widespread among Sardinians that over the course of two months in 2024, a grassroots petition to ban new wind and solar projects gathered over 210,000 certified signatures. That’s more than a quarter of Sardinia’s typical voter turnout and represents a cross-party consensus. People stood in long lines in public squares to sign. And it worked: Political leaders responded swiftly with an 18-month moratorium on renewable energy construction. “I’ve never seen so much engagement for anything” in Sardinia, says Elisa Sotgiu, a literary sociologist at the University of Oxford, who was born and raised on the island. “Sardinia has a bunch of problems like enormous unemployment. There’s lots of emigration because there are no jobs. It’s one of the poorest areas in Europe. The area is just decaying,” she says. “And yet the thing people are demonstrating against is renewable energy.” And the opposition continues: A network of mayors has mobilized for the cause. Thousands of people show up at organized protests. Activists vandalize grid equipment. Families are passing down these stories of resistance to their children as a point of pride. Local media outlets are egging it on, frequently publishing misinformation tinged with fearmongering. These aren’t just NIMBY complaints—not in the pejorative sense, at least. The resistance, and the distrust underlying it, is rooted in the island’s complex history, both recent and ancient. It’s based on a past that the Sardinian people carry with them—a past that has seeded a deep sense of suspicion and vulnerability. Resistance, I learn, is part of what it means to be Sardinian. Fabrizio Giulio Luca Pilo, vice rector of innovation at the University of Cagliari, has been working to help Sardinia transition to cleaner, more reliable energy. Luigi Avantaggiato “It is a very sad situation,” Pilo tells me. “There are a lot of economic reasons to do the [energy] transition.” It could attract new companies such as data centers, which would create new jobs, he argues. It could reduce Sardinia’s reliance on imported gas and fuel, making the island more independent. New economic activity on the island might help reverse its population decline, he adds. And while what’s happening on Sardinia is unique, it also represents a larger trend: A growing number of communities around the world are opposing wind- and solar-farm construction, to the consternation of stakeholders. By 2025, nearly one-fourth of the counties in the United States had enacted some impediment to new utility-scale wind and solar energy—up from as few as 15 percent two years earlier, according to a USA Today analysis. In Africa, community pushback successfully canceled major projects such as the 60-megawatt Kinangop Wind Park in Kenya. In India, local pastoralists are challenging the 13-gigawatt Ladakh solar and wind project. And the European Union’s top-down push for renewable energy has created opposition in many communities. Their reasons vary—land-use preferences, generational ethos, government resentment, property values, economic effects, aesthetics—but all of these struggles have this in common: The resisters are passionate and they are often successful in blocking development. This is a looming problem for the energy transition. Unlike large, centralized coal and nuclear power plants, renewable energy is geographically spread out, so it touches far more communities. Sardinia offers one of the clearest cases of what can go wrong when renewable-energy developers and authorities fail to consider the complexities of the local situation on the ground. Why is Sardinia resisting renewable energy? Roughly the size of New Hampshire, Sardinia juts out of the Mediterranean Sea about 200 kilometers west of Italy’s mainland. Technically it’s part of Italy, but Sardinians are quick to point out their island’s autonomous status—a subtle way of saying, “We do things our way.” Its mountains seem to echo the sentiment. With the highest peaks running in a chain along the east side of the island, Sardinia resolutely turns its back to the mainland. At first glance, the island looks like the kind of place that’s ripe for an energy transition. Its two coal plants are aging and are targeted to be shut down to meet climate commitments. It has no nuclear power, nor does it produce its own natural gas. Wind and sun, however, are abundant and could easily meet the energy needs of Sardinia’s sparse population of about 1.5 million. But while the resources may be ready for a transition, the people emphatically are not. When I first arrive in Sardinia and take in its beauty, I assume that the impetus behind the fight against wind and solar farms boils down to how they look. Waves of silicon, metal, and concrete would spoil views of Sardinia’s stunning beaches, rugged mountains, ancient pastures, and idyllic medieval villages, after all. Residents of the city of Orgosolo in 1969 famously stopped the construction of a military firing range on communal grazing land known as Pratobello. Its village walls are still covered in murals advocating social protest and antiauthoritarianism. Luigi Avantaggiato But the island’s aesthetic—and the tourism industry that depends on it—are only part of the equation. The far stronger cultural forces at play are rooted in Sardinia’s past. Over millennia, the island has endured successive invasions from outsiders seeking to exploit the land. These incursions, and Sardinians’ rebellious responses to them, have become an integral part of the island’s identity passed down through generations. The invasions started with the relatively peaceful settlement of the Phoenicians in the 9th and 8th centuries B.C.E. Then came the Romans, the Byzantines, and the Iberians, who conquered with violence, looting, and enslavement. But legend has it that despite the might of these ancient conquerors, pockets of Sardinia sometimes managed to defend themselves. “Not even the Roman empire could conquer the shepherds of the highland regions,” is the oft-repeated tale. Whether that’s true or just an idealization is beside the point; such stories serve as an enormous source of pride and identity. Sardinia exported about 30 percent of the electricity it generated in 2025, largely to Corsica and the Italian mainland via two existing submarine cables. The island is “fiercely proud of its identity…especially in the center of Sardinia, which was the most resistant part,” says Andrea Vargiu, a sociologist at the University of Sassari in Sardinia. “This long history of exploitation is still in our DNA, along with a proud sense of autonomy,” he says. Sardinia’s unification, in the mid-1800s, with what would become the Kingdom of Italy is seen by many as an act of colonization. It didn’t help that Italy then proceeded to exploit Sardinia’s forests and other resources for the benefit of the mainland—a practice that continued through the 20th century, says Vargiu. Sardinian bandits sometimes fought back with their own sense of justice, settling matters through raids, kidnappings, and violence. Their stories live on in Sardinian lore with an almost mythical quality, the brigands admired for their intractability. Pasquale Mereu, mayor of Orgosolo, helped organize the Pratobello 24 movement against renewable energy in Sardinia. Luigi Avantaggiato Italy’s use of the island for military purposes particularly irked locals. In a famous case in 1969, residents of the town of Orgosolo successfully thwarted the construction of a firing range on communal grazing land known as Pratobello. That name has since become synonymous with the defense of one’s territory, and a rallying cry. “Sardinia has always been a land of conquest,” says Pasquale Mereu, mayor of Orgosolo, who spoke with IEEE Spectrum through an interpreter. “We believe that even today we are still a colony of Italy, and I’m not ashamed to say it even though I represent an institution.” A longstanding mural on one of his village’s walls reads: “You are in the territory of Orgosolo; here the people rule supreme and the government obeys.” Sardinia’s History Shapes its Identity Driving around the island and talking to people, I can feel the weight of Sardinia’s history—and people’s propensity for holding onto it. Elaborate heritage festivals occur nearly every autumn weekend in the island’s interior. They’re well attended, multigenerational affairs that aim to keep old traditions alive. In the medieval town of Belvì, men roast chestnuts—marroni—over an open fire in a frying pan the size of a swimming pool and then serve them to the crowd by shoveling them into troughs. They’re delicious. In an adjacent amphitheater, the crowd sways along to costumed performers leading traditional dances. Then there are the Bronze Age stone structures, called nuraghi, that are pretty much everywhere. Built before the violent conquests, these conical towers have come to symbolize a romanticized vision of the heyday of Sardinia’s independence. More than 7,000 of them remain, ranging from unremarkable piles of rocks to complex towers, each one carefully documented on an interactive online map. I visit one of the more intact ones that’s fenced off and requires an admission fee. As I take some video with my phone, an employee asks me who I am and what I’m doing and informs me I’ll need to get permission from the government before posting anything online. This rock hollowed out by erosion and walled up with stones was likely used by shepherds as a shelter near the historic Sardinian village of Tempio Pausania. Luigi Avantaggiato But in interviews with residents, I’m continually reminded of the darker side of Sardinia’s past. People often bring up painful things that happened 50 or 500 years ago. A middle school science teacher named Giannina Serpi, and her husband, Roberto Moro, meet me at a café in the seaside town of Sant’Antioco. When I ask why people are so opposed to renewable energy, they (like many people I interviewed) point to the 1970s. Sheep return from pasture in Bonorva, Sardinia, near the Bonorva wind farm operated by EDF Renewables. Luigi Avantaggiato That decade brought a new kind of exploitation: not by empires or governments, but by technology companies. Petrochemical, aluminum, and other industrial companies from overseas built factories on the island, creating jobs and adjacent businesses. But after a few decades, economic and geopolitical factors led the companies to close the factories, sinking local economies and in some cases leaving behind toxic contamination. In the northern city of Porto Torres, several petrochemical plants, a thermoelectric power plant, and an industrial harbor employed about 8,000 workers in the early 1970s. But the oil crises of that decade took its toll on jobs, and when environmental contamination became evident in the 1990s, employment plunged further. By 2010, most of the petrochemical plants had closed. Studies show that residents of Porto Torres during that time had curiously high rates of death from cancer, although there is no consensus on the cause. Similarly, studies have found higher rates of lead in children in the Portovesme area in the southwest, about a 20-minute drive from where I sit with Serpi and Moro in Sant’Antioco. There, the U.S. aluminum producer Alcoa operated a smelter that employed about 500 people and supported an estimated 1,500 adjacent jobs. But the company shut down the smelter in 2012. Three years earlier, Russian aluminum manufacturer Rusal had idled its Eurallumina factory nearby. The impacts of these events still feel fresh, Serpi explains through a digital translator. She says she teaches this history to her students but doesn’t tell them how to feel about it. “I let them decide,” she says. Energy Colonialism in Sardinia Against this backdrop, renewable-energy developers in the early 2010s began sizing up Sardinia. They were drawn by the cheap land, low population, strong wind, and sun that shines an average of about 300 days a year. EF Solare Italia commissioned an 11-MW solar plant in 2010. Rome-based Enel Green Power began construction of a 90-MW wind farm in Portoscuso the following year. Other developers followed, and they mostly came from elsewhere—mainland Italy, Europe, and later, China. The way many Sardinians saw it, the new plants didn’t bring many long-lasting jobs. Most of the work ended after the design and installation phases, and profits went back to the companies’ headquarters outside of Sardinia, they argued. People called it “energy colonialism” and lauded landowners who refused to sell or lease their property to developers. Pink granite called Ghiandone Limbara was extracted from the Sinnada quarry in northern Sardinia from the late 1970s to 2011. Luigi Avantaggiato The uncle of Oxford’s Sotgiu is one of those landowners. She says that a couple of years ago a solar company asked him if he would allow the installation of an array on his family farm in Logudoro in Sardinia’s interior. “From that, he would have gotten something around €150,000 a year, which is more money than he’s seen in his life,” says Sotgiu. The money could have covered his three kids’ college education, she says. “But he refused.” He had many reasons. For one, switching from sheep grazing to the more passive business of leasing land would have put the fate of his income in the hands of an outsider. “If you deprive a region of any sort of economy that is self-reliant, then it’s really fragile,” says Sotgiu. Her uncle didn’t trust that the income would last, and worried he’d be left with a ruined farm, she says. Plus, his farm has been in the family for generations and one of his sons is interested in continuing the business. “So I understand his pride in saying, ‘No, this is my farm, I don’t care about the money,’” she says. Sardinia has one of the largest carbon footprints per capita in Europe. Despite that kind of grassroots resistance, development continued. In 2023, the Italian government authorized the construction of a 1-GW submarine power cable to connect Sardinia to Sicily and the Italian mainland. When completed, the bidirectional cable, called the Tyrrhenian Link, will increase electricity exchange between the regions, bolster grid reliability, and help grid operators efficiently use more renewable energy. Sardinian activists, however, view the cable as a way to justify even more construction of wind and solar plants, and to export the island’s energy for the benefit of non-Sardinians. The island already exports about 30 percent of its electricity, largely to Corsica and the Italian mainland via two existing submarine cables. The Florinas wind farm, commissioned in 2004, was one of the earliest wind farms built in Sardinia. Luigi Avantaggiato And then came the tipping point. In June 2024, in an effort to meet the European Union’s 2030 renewable energy targets, Italy committed to building more than 80 GW of new wind and solar energy capacity over December 2020 levels. The national government divvied up the burden among its regions and told Sardinia to build its portion, 6.2 GW. The move triggered an onslaught of requests from wind and solar developers wanting to build projects in Sardinia. The queue at one point topped 50 GW of grid-connection requests. That represented more than 700 solar and wind projects, many of which came from companies outside of Sardinia. The southern newspaper L’Unione Sarda ran wild with the numbers. Almost daily, for months, it published stories about the “wind assault.” The call-to-arms posts urged people to protest. “The Attack on the Landscape Does Not Stop; The Threat From Agrivoltaics Is Growing,” read a July 2024 headline. Unsubstantiated articles tried to link wind and solar developers to organized crime. “It was scaremongering,” says Sotgiu. “It was a little dishonest, as I saw it, because they kept exaggerating and scaring people into thinking that we were going to be invaded.” (Representatives of the newspaper declined to comment.) The numbers did scare people. Lost was the fact that a grid-connection request is just the start of a multiyear process that involves permitting and legal review and often ends in withdrawn or downsized projects. Submitting a request is inexpensive, and developers often cast a wide net by entering lots of these queues globally to increase the odds of being accepted. In the end, only a fraction come to fruition. In other words, building all, or even most, of the requested 50 GW was never going to happen. “I tried to explain this” to the public, says an industrial engineer at the University of Cagliari, in Sardinia, who asked to remain anonymous to avoid any detrimental impacts of speaking out. “I went to the regional television station. But it’s difficult with technical information. And the newspaper communication is so bad, and its impact is so strong in the community, that it’s very difficult to change people’s minds,” he says. Pratobello 2024 and Anti-Wind Protests And so the collective angst caused by powerful outsiders, industry, and the state united Sardinians into a singular cause. Faced with what felt like another attempted conquest, they did what their families and community had taught them to do: They resisted. Says Mereu: “This is what we are rebelling against: the idea that Sardinians are few and therefore must put up with everything.” In a nod to the 1969 resistance in Orgosolo, they dubbed the movement “Pratobello 2024.” Activist groups, called “committees,” organized protests, and created social media campaigns and videos. Thousands of people started showing up at planned demonstrations. A lawyer went on a hunger strike. Vandals unscrewed bolts on wind turbine blades and set fire to grid and construction equipment. Italy’s transmission system operator, Terna, had to switch to company cars without logos to avoid being targeted. Students studying the electricity system in a master’s program sponsored by Terna were verbally attacked at an airport, according to a professor at their school who spoke with me about the violence. Celebrities got involved. Italian actress and Bond Girl Caterina Murino met with Sardinia’s president to ask her to reject wind farms. Murino posted on Instagram: “Nobody touch Sardinia!!!!” On Italian national TV, the jazz legend Paolo Fresu performed on trumpet while popular TV host Geppi Cucciari read an impassioned lament about the exploitation of the island. Sardinian author Erre Push penned a graphic novel titled Fàula Birdi about a protagonist who resisted an imposition from outsiders. He wrote it upon the request of the activist group ReCommon, whose mission is to “challenge corporate and state power responsible for the plunder of territories.” Push hopes the book will inspire more people to follow the protagonist’s lead. “Renewables are another imposition like in the past—not to help Sardinians but to help external people like industry managers or founders of companies,” he told me through an interpreter. Concerned about the influx of solar and wind farms being built in Sardinia by outsiders, Roberto Pusceddu, under his pen name Erre Push, published a graphic novel that aimed to inspire young people to resist such impositions. Luigi Avantaggiato Mereu and a network of mayors drafted the petition that gathered so many signatures. The people had spoken. In response, Sardinian politicians passed a law that imposed an 18-month ban on construction of wind and solar projects within 7 km of a nuraghe or other archeological site. It wasn’t a total ban, but it might as well have been. “If you put a circle with a 7-km radius around each archeological site, you cover all of Sardinia,” says Emilio Ghiani, a power systems expert at the University of Cagliari. “In this way, it is impossible to find a place to install a new plant.” The move was like giving the Italian government—and the EU’s clean energy targets—the middle finger. And it sent renewable-energy developers scrambling. One company building an agriphotovoltaic plant raced to bring construction to 30 percent completion, which the new law said was the threshold for being allowed to proceed. The company asked not to be named in this story to avoid trouble. Furious, the government in Rome challenged the Sardinian regional law in Italy’s Constitutional Court, and in January this year it prevailed. In its decision, the court rejected the law, saying that renewable-energy projects should be evaluated case by case. Project development quickly resumed. So did the backlash. A headline in L’Unione Sarda declared: “Enough With Top-Down Decisions Without Consulting Communities.” Sardinia’s Renewable Energy Conflict Where the island goes from here is unclear. There’s a willingness among a portion of the population to move forward with an energy transition. For example, some of Sardinia’s largest cheese makers are powering their operations with renewable energy and installing systems to utilize waste heat for efficiency. But for the most part, the public isn’t budging in its resistance. Researchers are trying to dispel inaccurate information, but regional newspapers seem bent on perpetuating fear. Plus, there are technical issues to work out before a full-scale energy transition can be made. Sardinia’s transmission system was built around the centralized generation of two coal plants; it wasn’t made for the distributed generation of wind and solar plants. Renewables require a more dynamic grid, more energy storage, and a wider range of power sources to compensate for their intermittency. Engineers are working on it, but they’ve got a ways to go. The new Tyrrhenian Link undersea power cable will help with that. By connecting Sardinia, Sicily, and the mainland, the cable creates more flexibility in the system. When wind or solar generation slows in Sardinia, for example, electricity from the mainland can fill in the gap, and vice versa. “It will increase the reliability of the system, and after it’s installed, it will be possible to switch off the old generation plants that use coal,” says Ghiani. In January, Terna finished laying the western section of the cable between Sardinia and Sicily, and in April it completed the eastern section between Sicily and Campania on the mainland. Doing so set a world record for power cable depth, at 2,150 meters below sea level, according to Terna. Italy originally ordered Sardinia’s two coal plants to shut down by 2025 but later extended the deadline to 2038. The link is one of the most innovative high-voltage direct current (HVDC) projects in Europe. It can move up to a gigawatt of power and reverse that power flow nearly instantaneously. By using voltage source converter (VSC) technology, it can also help prevent power-flow problems by regulating frequency and smoothing out oscillations in the grid in real time. And it has black-start capability: In the event of a shutdown, it can help restore the grid without relying on an external electric network. These features are particularly helpful for an isolated network like Sardinia’s. Italy has created new incentives and regulations to build a market for grid-scale energy storage. Having plenty of storage is a key to scaling up renewables because it provides backup power when the wind isn’t blowing or the sun isn’t shining. To this end, Italy created MACSE, an auction that gives storage developers revenue certainty. Its name translates to mechanism for the procurement of electricity storage capacity. The first auction round, in September, successfully awarded 10 GWh. Energy experts in Sardinia are also working with policymakers to change the rules around grid-connection requests. But these kinds of nerdy details don’t grace most household conversations. Industrial Sites Host Energy Storage Something more accessible that the public can get behind is building renewables on Sardinia’s abandoned industrial sites. “To be honest, not everything is so beautiful here. We have a lot of industrial areas where you can place PV panels. We have a lot of rooftops,” electrical engineer Pilo says. “We have unused coal mines.” I visit one such project that’s proceeding with local support—or at least without much opposition. It’s a coal mine near Gonnesa that shut down in 2018 and is now being turned into a data center and a pumped-hydro energy storage system. The plan is to move water through the mine’s vertical geometry via an enclosed membrane—like a soft pipe—and use the flow to turn a turbine that generates electricity. The water then gets pumped back to the surface and stored in pear-shaped vessels above ground. The scheme will help power the data center, which will be built both above and below ground, including in the mine’s largest chambers nearly 500 meters below the Earth’s surface. Energy Vault will remove old mining equipment from the Carbosulcis coal mine near Gonnesa to make way for an underground data center [above]. It will be powered by a pumped-hydro energy storage system that flows through the mine’s vertical geometry and stores water in above-ground tanks [top].Luigi Avantaggiato Energy storage developer Energy Vault is building it, and despite being based in Lugano, Switzerland—that is, not Sardinia—the company seems to have avoided protest. It helps that the mine is owned by Carbosulcis, a Sardinian regional-government-owned company, which is calling the shots on the project. Plus, doing nothing with the mine costs money. The mine closed eight years ago because it wasn’t profitable, but Carbosulcis must continue maintaining it because of its high methane emissions, which require monitoring and ventilation to prevent explosions and leaks. Carbosulcis managers figured that if they’re going to continue putting money and personnel into the mine, they might as well do something useful with it, Luca Manzella, vice president for Europe, Middle East, and Africa at Energy Vault, says as he and I tour the mine. An innovative project in Sardinia’s interior—Energy Dome’s grid-scale carbon dioxide battery—seems to be avoiding protest as well. Built in a gated industrial complex near Ottana, this energy-storage facility looks like a giant bubble—the kind that fits over a stadium or tennis complex. It’s filled with carbon dioxide that is compressed to store 200 MWh of electricity for the grid. Although the bubble is visible from several of the surrounding hillside villages, and although the developer is headquartered on the mainland, there’s little sign of public pushback. Energy Dome began operating its 20-megawatt, long-duration energy-storage facility in July 2025 in Ottana, Sardinia. In partnership with Google, the company this year aims to build replicas of the system on multiple continents.Luigi Avantaggiato Another path forward is through “energy communities.” In this grassroots approach, consumers work together to build their own solar plant or other power generation. Dozens of these communities are already active on the island, according to the Sardinian Electricity Association, a group that provides guidance to consumers. But by far the greatest need is for energy developers and authorities to understand the people and the history of the land on which they want to build. “When Europe or the national government make a law, they have to also consider the background of Sardinian people and why they are so afraid,” says Simone Micheletti, CEO at Futura Group, a renewable-energy developer based in Serramanna, Sardinia. “You cannot apply the same law to Sweden and Sicily. Sometimes you need to understand [the situation] locally,” he says. Decision makers everywhere would be wise to listen. Otherwise, they may suffer the same fate as their counterparts in Sardinia: despised by locals, delayed by politics, and surprised at how badly it all went. Special thanks to Luigi Avantaggiato for interpreting and additional reporting. This story was updated on 13 May, 2026 to correct the percentage of electricity that Sardinia exports.