NATO fears Europe unprepared for prolonged Russia conflict as hybrid warfare gains ground

Behind closed doors at a Munich security conference this week, European defence officials made an uncomfortable admission: if Russia attacked tomorrow, Europe probably couldn't fight back for long. The problem wasn't weapons or training. It was the public. Voters across the continent, they said, simply weren't prepared for the kind of grinding, costly war that a conflict with Moscow would demand.

This anxiety reflects a deeper fear among NATO planners—that Russia may already be winning a different kind of war, one fought not with tanks but with disinformation, cyber-attacks, and the exploitation of genuine grievances. Moscow has spent years cultivating relationships with far-right and populist parties across Europe's major military powers. These parties, now surging in polls ahead of elections in Poland, France, and Italy next year, tend to oppose continued support for Ukraine and question NATO's purpose. The result is a continent increasingly divided on the very question of whether it should prepare for conflict with Russia at all.

British officials, speaking anonymously at the conference, were blunt about their own failure. One recent cabinet member said the West had been "crap" at explaining to ordinary people what hybrid warfare even means. Another UK diplomat went further, saying successive prime ministers had done almost nothing to prepare the public for the scale of the threat. "The level of the debate has been at that of a kindergarten," the diplomat said. This left governments in an impossible position: asking voters to accept cuts to welfare and social spending so money could flow to defence budgets, without having first built any consensus that such sacrifice was necessary.

Italy, home to one of Europe's strongest militaries, has become a particular flashpoint. The country is experiencing daily cyber-attacks, according to its foreign minister, Antonio Tajani, who recently warned that Russia may attempt to interfere in Italy's national elections—the first time an Italian politician has made such a public warning. Italy's defence minister, Guido Crosetto, has been more direct still, saying his country lacks "antibodies" against Russian interference and that social media bots show clear signs of coordinated Russian activity. He noted that Moscow operates across multiple domains simultaneously: social media, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, databases, and critical infrastructure. Yet Crosetto also acknowledged a complicating truth: Russia doesn't create European discontent from nothing. It exploits real problems—low wages, the cost of living, weariness with the Ukraine war. Blaming everything on disinformation risks ignoring genuine grievances that governments have failed to address.

The far-right Futuro Nazionale party, led by Roberto Vannacci, is widely seen as the most likely vehicle for Russian messaging in Italy's coming elections, which could happen as early as April. When critics called Vannacci a "Manchurian candidate" serving Moscow's interests, he responded with sarcasm, saying he was merely complaining about unaffordable petrol prices and questioning Brussels' orthodoxy—hardly evidence of foreign control. The comment captures the bind European officials face: distinguishing between legitimate political opposition and coordinated foreign interference has become nearly impossible.

In response, European defence ministers are attempting to build independent military coordination through a group of five major European powers—the UK, France, Germany, Italy, and Poland. The E5, as it's known, is in early stages of planning joint procurement of air defence systems, precision strike capabilities, and space-based early warning systems that NATO currently relies on the United States to provide. This matters because Washington is expected to announce significant reductions in its troop commitments to Europe in coming months. Europe would need to be ready to defend itself. Yet the very political instability that hybrid warfare has created now threatens these coordination efforts. The rise of populist parties hostile to Ukraine and skeptical of NATO could derail the consensus needed to build a stronger European defence pillar.

Meanwhile, Ukraine itself is becoming an unexpected asset in this calculation. The country is now building 200,000 drones per month, with a goal of producing more than 7 million by 2026. Small and medium-sized companies across Ukraine have sprung up to assemble them, mostly using Chinese components and working from small workshops. Italy's defence minister has recruited Ukraine's former defence minister as an unpaid adviser, hoping to shift how Europeans view the conflict—not as a drain on resources, but as a laboratory for modern warfare that Europe needs to learn from. Whether that reframing can overcome the political headwinds Russia has created remains the central question facing European defence planners.