Europe’s Unfinished Response to Information Warfare

Today marks the fourth anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, widely framed as a historic turning point in European security policy. For a continent that had, for decades, grown accustomed to the relative absence of interstate military escalation – aside from the wars in the Balkans – the shock of February 2022 was profound. 

Since then, European governments have responded with considerable seriousness, mobilizing unprecedented financial resources to support Ukraine both militarily and through humanitarian aid, while simultaneously strengthening their own security architecture. Russia moved decisively back to the center of European security thinking. Yet many of the warning signs had been accumulating for years. What changed in 2022 was not the nature of the challenge, but Europe’s willingness to finally acknowledge it.

February 24th was not the beginning of the war. It was the moment Europe noticed.

To date the conflict solely from February 24th, 2022, is to misunderstand its trajectory and its embeddedness in a larger confrontation between Russian authoritarianism and Western democratic orders. The full-scale invasion marked a dramatic military escalation, but it did not constitute the conflict’s origin. Long before tanks crossed borders, hybrid strategies had been deployed in informational and cognitive domains – against Ukraine, but also against Western democracies at large.¹ Ukraine is undoubtedly central to Russia’s geopolitical ambitions. Yet the confrontation extends beyond territory into perception, trust, and public discourse.²

What is often termed the “second front”³ – the domain of information and cognitive warfare – has been active for decades. Yet while Ukraine learned to treat this dimension as structurally integral to modern conflict, much of Europe continues to respond primarily in reactive terms, treating the informational domain as peripheral rather than as a core element of contemporary security.

The contrast with the military sphere is striking. In matters of defense, Europe mobilized unprecedented financial resources, redefined strategic priorities, and accelerated institutional coordination. In the informational sphere, however, efforts have been fragmented, incremental, and often secondary.⁴ This is not to suggest inactivity: awareness has grown, monitoring mechanisms have expanded, and a hybrid toolbox has taken shape, with debunking and fact-checking becoming institutionalized practices. Yet the underlying approach remains largely reactive, addressing narratives after they circulate rather than reshaping the conditions that enable them.

This imbalance carries strategic consequences. If contemporary conflict unfolds not only on physical battlefields but also in the realm of perception, trust, and narrative framing, then platform governance and media literacy are not optional supplements to security policy. They are components of it.

Yet the informational domain diverges significantly from the military sphere in its governing logic. Military responses to armed aggression operate within defined institutional mandates and follow established frameworks of deterrence, alliance coordination, and resource allocation. The informational realm, by contrast, resists such clarity. Questions of how to respond, who should coordinate, and how far intervention may legitimately extend into the public sphere are far more contested. They intersect with fundamental concerns of democratic legitimacy, freedom of expression, and the permissible scope of state authority.

This complexity helps explain Europe’s hesitation. How does one strengthen resilience without sliding into censorship? How can strategic coordination occur without centralizing narrative control? How can democratic societies defend themselves without internalizing the very logic of information warfare?

This article addresses these questions. It first examines the structural nature of information warfare and the lessons drawn from Ukraine’s response. It then argues that neither passivity nor the adoption of war logic offers a sustainable path for Europe. Instead, it proposes a third approach: a strategy that treats democratic resilience as core security infrastructure rather than as an afterthought.

What is Information and Cognitive Warfare?

In the 21st century, warfare has undergone a remarkable change. The focus of conflict has increasingly expanded beyond traditional battlefields into social and ideological domains, driven by technological advancements and the pervasive influence of social media.⁵ While the integration of military and non-military strategies such as propaganda or psychological operations is not entirely new to warfare, the internet, social media, and cyber capabilities have significantly increased the reach and impact of such psychological operations.

In this expanded battlespace, information warfare refers to the strategic effort to control, exploit, and disrupt information environments in order to gain advantage over an adversary. Conducted largely through digital platforms, it seeks to shape perception, influence public discourse, and affect political decision-making.⁶ Cognitive warfare goes one step further: it targets not only information itself, but the cognitive processes through which individuals interpret it, drawing on insights from psychology and behavioural science to shape perception and judgement.⁷

Russian Information and Cognitive Warfare Strategies

Russia recognized the strategic relevance of this “new” informational domain long before 2022. References to “information warfare” and “information confrontation” have appeared in Russian security discourse since the early years of Vladimir Putin’s presidency.⁸ 

In 2013, Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces Valery Gerasimov described contemporary conflict as increasingly shaped by non-military means, suggesting that informational, political, and psychological instruments could in certain contexts outweigh conventional battlefield engagements. Even if the so-called “Gerasimov doctrine” was never a formal strategy paper, it reflected a broader continuity in Russian strategic thinking: conflict was no longer confined to physical terrain, but extended into the cognitive and societal fabric of adversaries.⁹

Since then, states and political actors perceived as opposing Moscow’s interests have frequently become targets of cyber operations, information leaks, and coordinated influence campaigns (Lilly, 2022). The tactics are tailored to national contexts within NATO countries, drawing on historical ties and specific political fault lines. Rather than manufacturing divisions from scratch, these campaigns amplify existing societal fractures – from migration debates and LGBTQAI+ rights to Euroscepticism – thereby deepening polarization within and between allied states.¹⁰

Since 2022, and particularly in response to Europe’s sustained military and political support for Ukraine, influence activities and cyber operations targeting European states have increased in frequency and visibility. These operations are remarkably adaptive, adjusting to new political developments, emerging platforms, and shifting media environments. A detailed assessment of their tactical evolution exceeds the scope of this article. What matters here is their persistence and flexibility.

Recent reporting by the Jamestown Foundation further indicates that this domain continues to receive strategic priority. Russia’s draft 2026 budget reduces conventional military spending while significantly increasing funding for state-run media, a signal that informational instruments remain central to its strategic calculus.¹¹

What can be learned from Ukraine?

Since the annexation of Crimea in 2014, the conflict between Russia and Ukraine has unfolded not only on the battlefield, but also in the informational sphere. Russia’s hybrid strategy in Crimea was accompanied by coordinated disinformation efforts that exploited weaknesses in Ukraine’s fragmented media landscape and broader civil society infrastructure.¹² From the outset, the informational dimension was structural, not secondary.

Ukraine’s response evolved accordingly. Over the past decade, and especially after the full-scale invasion in 2022, Kyiv has treated strategic communication as a core component of national defense. Through coordinated messaging, institutionalized information security structures, and a deliberate effort to frame the war as a defense of democracy and international law, Ukraine has maintained narrative coherence domestically while mobilizing international support.¹³

Central to this approach was the consolidation of messaging under a “one voice” policy and the professionalization of communication across platforms. President Zelenskyy’s frequent video addresses and direct digital outreach reinforced a sense of unity and resilience, while Ukraine adapted its messaging to the logic of social media, employing an informal tone, visual storytelling, and culturally resonant formats to reach global audiences.[/note]Perez, C., & Nair, A. (2022). Information Warfare in Russia’s War in Ukraine. Foreign Policy. https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/08/22/information-warfare-in-russias-war-in-ukraine/[/note]

The result has been a highly coordinated and strategically integrated communication effort that treats the informational domain not as an auxiliary arena, but as an operational theater of war.

Why Ukraine’s Success Is Not Europe’s Blueprint

Ukraine’s communication strategy must be understood within the context of existential war. Under conditions of direct military aggression, measures such as centralized messaging, narrative consolidation, and certain forms of information control can be justified as instruments of national survival. In wartime, the priority is cohesion. Clear framing, moral orientation, and disciplined communication structures serve the function of mobilization and defense.

The European Union, however, is not engaged in direct military confrontation. It faces a different form of pressure: hybrid in nature, dispersed across informational, political, and digital domains. The primary target is not territorial sovereignty, but democratic cohesion itself.

This distinction matters: when democratic cohesion is the primary object of both attack and protection, strategies of narrative control risk becoming counterproductive. What may serve survival in wartime can generate mistrust in a pluralistic union already marked by polarization and Euroscepticism. The institutionalization of simplified narratives or restrictive communication policies could reinforce accusations of censorship and fuel anti-European sentiment.

Yet it is probably this dilemma that has contributed to Europe’s strategic paralysis. On the one hand, fully adopting the logic of information warfare would risk altering the character of democratic governance. On the other, limiting responses to reactive measures leaves structural vulnerabilities intact (Baumann & Pynnöniemi, 2025). Caught between these risks, Europe has struggled to articulate a coherent and ambitious approach.

At present, Europe appears stuck between these two paths — debunking and monitoring on the one hand, rhetorical flirtation with “strategic communication” on the other. In both cases, the opportunity cost is significant: instead of strengthening democratic resilience, Europe remains trapped within a security paradigm defined either by external informational aggression or by its own adoption of war-like communication logics.

In principle, this is hardly controversial. The language of resilience, media literacy, and democratic values already permeates European policy frameworks. What is missing is not normative commitment, but operational translation. Too often, the term “resilience” remains a hopeful metaphor rather than a funded, institutionalized, and measurable strategic priority.

Democratic Resilience as Security Infrastructure

If democratic cohesion is treated as critical infrastructure, it must be governed accordingly, with conceptual clarity, coordinated implementation, and sustained investment. Otherwise, it risks remaining a rhetorical aspiration while the informational environment continues to be shaped by external actors and platform logics.

This begins with a simple but often overlooked realization:

A continent that does not exercise meaningful control over its information infrastructure cannot fully safeguard its democratic discourse.

(Read more on Europe’s digital dependence here)

Firstly, democratic debate today unfolds on privately governed, transnational platforms whose design incentives are not aligned with European constitutional principles, but with commercial imperatives and global power asymmetries. As long as the architecture of public communication remains structurally external, efforts at resilience will remain partial. 

Against this backdrop, it is striking how reluctant Europe has been to invest in its own platform infrastructures. Billions have been mobilized for military modernization. Significant resources are now being directed toward technological sovereignty in artificial intelligence. Yet the social media architectures through which democratic discourse is organized remain largely external. The issue is not a lack of alternatives. Federated models such as Mastodon and the broader Fediverse demonstrate that different architectural principles are technically viable: decentralized, transparent, less dependent on engagement-maximization logics. What they lack is political backing and funding. The technical groundwork exists, what is needed now is a mandated team, a defined budget, and a public process that decides what such infrastructure should serve and who it should answer to.

Admittedly, this raises practical questions: How can alternative infrastructures achieve broad public adoption? How can they compete with entrenched, globally dominant platforms? These are real challenges, but not arguments for inaction. They are precisely the kind that must now be addressed if Europe is serious about aligning its digital infrastructures with its democratic principles.

Secondly, resilience cannot remain a buzzword: Media literacy, cognitive resilience, and emotional resilience have become the backbone of democracy in the digital age. Yet they are still treated as optional add-ons rather than democratic necessities. These concepts must be operationalized: translated from aspiration into funded programs, institutionalized structures, and concrete action plans; with assigned budgets, clear responsibilities, and measurable targets across member states. This also requires sustained support for independent journalism. A fragmented information environment cannot be stabilized without strong, professional media ecosystems.

Thirdly, Europe is right to insist on preserving its democratic core rather than adopting the logic of permanent informational warfare. The commitment to openness, pluralism, and constitutional restraint remains a strategic strength. But this strength must also be understood and deployed as a strategic asset. As this article has sought to demonstrate, democratic systems are deliberately targeted through digitally mediated influence operations designed to fragment, polarize, and erode trust. The informational dimension of conflict is now structural. Much has been said about resilience, media literacy, and democratic values. Far less has been structurally funded, coordinated, and institutionalized.

Europe does not need to abandon its democratic identity. It needs to update it, and invest in it accordingly.

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