EU commissioner warns Russia is waging hybrid war to break Europe's will to defend

EU commissioner warns Russia is waging hybrid war to break Europe's will to defend

Russia is deliberately waging a hybrid war against the European Union and NATO member states in an attempt to erode their political will to defend themselves and to keep supporting Ukraine, European Commissioner for Defence Andrius Kubilius said at the launch of the EU's third Hybrid Threats Report at the Berlaymont building in Brussels. Presenting the report, Kubilius said the document, produced with the EU's Joint Research Centre and the European Centre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats, sets out how Europe should anticipate, defend against and respond to such attacks.

Key facts

What does political defence readiness mean?

Kubilius described defence readiness as resting on three equally important pillars: material readiness, meaning money and production capacity; institutional readiness, meaning the organisation of defence; and political readiness, meaning the will to defend and to unite. He said the report focuses on the third pillar, arguing that political will is the absolute precondition for defence, since no quantity of tanks or drones can compensate for a lack of will to fight.

He said history offers many examples of kingdoms, countries and empires that fell because they lacked the will to defend themselves, and that Russia is now actively trying to undermine that will in Europe, particularly the will to support Ukraine. Kubilius said Russian hybrid warfare dates back to Soviet times and is now associated with the so-called Gerasimov doctrine, which he said draws no line between occupying people's hearts and minds and occupying territory. How is the threat showing up?

According to the commissioner, the report shows that attacks are becoming more numerous and more severe. He cited murders, arson, drone provocations, jamming and spoofing in recent years, along with many drone incursions in the Baltics and along the Eastern flank in recent months and a drone attack on Leipzig airport beyond that flank. This month, he said, fires struck Starlink infrastructure in Bulgaria and Lithuania.

Kubilius also pointed to comments by Italian Defence Minister Guido Crosetto, who blamed recent riots in France and Italy on a hybrid war being fought on European soil, and to a Financial Times report two days earlier that pro-Russian social media accounts were seeking to inflame the situation in France. He quoted European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen saying it is time to call the phenomenon by its name: hybrid warfare. Such campaigns, he said, aim to spread fear, distrust and division in democracies and, above all, to destroy the political will to defend. What does the report recommend?

Kubilius said hybrid war demands a hybrid defence. The first element is societal resilience: protecting the hearts and minds of citizens is as important as protecting borders, and people must be helped to prepare for and withstand a long-term hybrid campaign. He cited the "total defence" concept used in his native Lithuania and other member states, under which the whole of society takes part in defence readiness, and argued that protecting power grids, railways and factories against sabotage matters as much as defending the front line, because destroying such infrastructure spreads fear and erodes confidence in the state.

The report warns that adversaries seek cascading effects and try to saturate the European security ecosystem, with the aim of exhausting democracies and wearing down their capacity to endure attacks, absorb their impact and recover. Kubilius said the best defence is preventing attacks altogether, which makes deterrence the second element. He backed the report's conclusion that an incremental response would not deter the worst attacks but would instead incentivise further escalation from Russia, and that only decisive retaliation imposing costs the adversary cannot tolerate will discourage future planning. He added that member states need instruments for the strongest countermeasures, which cannot be discussed publicly but are under discussion. Why does unity matter?

The third element, Kubilius said, is acting together as Europe. He endorsed the report's call for an advanced multi-domain strategy that combines anticipation of operations, active defence during attacks and robust reactions that raise the cost of hostile behaviour, and stressed the importance of intelligence services and cybersecurity tools in that effort. He summed up the approach as answering any attempt to weaken European unity with greater unity, and any attempt to weaken support for Ukraine with stronger support.

The launch of the third Hybrid Threats Report feeds into the EU's wider debate on defence readiness, in which the Commission has been pressing member states to treat societal resilience and infrastructure protection as core security questions rather than national afterthoughts. The report's findings are now on the desk of the commissioner's office, where Kubilius said he had read them thoroughly and strongly recommended them, leaving it to member states to take forward the discussion of countermeasures he described as too sensitive to be aired in public.

Source: European Commission

More news

Sitemap