The Media Line: Europe Inches Closer to War With Russia: NATO Countries Ill-Equipped

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Europe Inches Closer to War With Russia: NATO Countries Ill-Equipped

After years of underinvestment and complacency, European Union countries boost defense spending, rebuild armies and brace for long-term instability as Russia tests their unity with cyberattacks, energy pressure and information warfare.

By Giorgia Valente / The Media Line

Across Europe, the debate over defense—long relegated to the margins of public life—has returned with extraordinary speed. Governments are raising defense budgets to levels unseen in decades, reviving elements of national service, purchasing advanced missile systems and, increasingly, preparing populations for the possibility of prolonged geopolitical instability.

What was once dismissed as alarmism is now entering mainstream policymaking. From Paris to Warsaw to Rome, officials warn that the continent is moving into a period where deterrence, resilience and societal readiness may determine Europe’s strategic survival.

Updated defense data across the European Union (EU) show that military spending has grown sharply since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. NATO’s European members added more than $100 billion in defense outlays between 2022 and 2024, with further increases projected through the decade.

Germany’s dramatic pivot — the €100 billion Zeitenwende fund — has reshaped procurement priorities, bringing systems such as the Arrow-3 missile shield into Europe for the first time. Poland is now building one of the largest armies in the EU, while the Nordic countries continue to expand conscription to meet rising readiness demands.

Even in Southern Europe, where defense debates traditionally play a quieter political role, the shift is unmistakable. In Italy, President Sergio Mattarella convened a high-level defense meeting last month, focused on future security scenarios, signaling that concerns about Russia’s trajectory, hybrid pressure and long-term instability have reached the highest institutional levels in Rome as well.

According to European intelligence agencies—the latest being Germany’s foreign intelligence service, BND—Russia aims to regain the capability to threaten NATO territory by 2030–2035, a scenario that is now being factored into defense planning across the continent.

Giuseppe Spatafora, a research analyst at the EU Institute for Security Studies told The Media Line that “… it’s a possibility to be taken very seriously. A lot will depend on when the war in Ukraine ends and how quickly Russia can reconstitute its forces.”

This growing sense of urgency is reshaping Europe’s strategic imagination—and not only through conventional military lenses.

European governments increasingly acknowledge that conflict with Russia could unfold in ways that fall short of open warfare yet inflict significant disruption. Over the past three years, EU institutions have documented a surge in cyberattacks targeting ministries, parliaments and energy systems; unexplained damage to undersea cables; pressures at border crossings engineered through migration flows; and information campaigns designed to amplify polarization within European societies.

Jason Jay Smart, a Kyiv-based advisor on national security and geopolitics, told The Media Line that Russia already believes that it is at war with the West.

“To avoid triggering NATO’s Article 5, it relies on Cold War–style hybrid tools: cyberattacks on parliaments and power grids, sabotage of cables, weaponized migration through Belarus, and information operations that finance and amplify extremists,” he said.

Smart stresses that escalation may not appear as a single dramatic moment, but as a pattern of overlapping disruptions such as cyber strikes, infrastructure fires and unusual troop movements in Belarus or Kaliningrad all occurring together under the cover of exercises.

“Europe keeps worrying about provoking Russia, while the Kremlin has learned it can hit us through sabotage, criminal networks, hacking, terrorism by proxy, illegal migration pressure and the information space, and we are still not structurally prepared to respond,” he said.

Spatafora echoes the concern, noting that vulnerabilities differ across the continent.

“The countries that are closest to Russia are obviously the most exposed. The Baltics more than others because they’re easier to cut off and harder to resupply. But other countries are more vulnerable to hybrid attacks because they are less prepared …,” he noted.

Despite massive increases in spending, Europe still lacks a fully integrated defense architecture. NATO remains the central pillar of continental security, but EU member states have launched their own initiatives—such as the European Peace Facility, the Security Action for Europe (SAFE) instrument and the European Defence Industry Programme (EDIP)—to build a more autonomous defense industrial base.

Whether these efforts amount to a coherent strategy is debatable.

Spatafora notes that progress has been made, with coordination at the highest level, and European countries agreeing to spend on defense as a matter of urgency. NATO is coordinating national procurement plans and there has been a push to develop the industrial base for European defense to allow for some measure of defense self-sufficiency.

“There is, of course, some degree of discrepancy because each country makes decisions nationally, but there are signs of increased coordination and instruments that allow it—like SAFE, EDIP, etc,” Spatafora said.

Smart is more skeptical. For him, European rearmament looks more like a shopping list than a strategy.

“Arrow-3 in Germany, tanks in Poland, and new air defense in the Nordics are all important, but they still do not form one integrated European shield,” he said.

“Moscow is already attacking our grids, undersea cables, ports, elections, and information space, yet many capitals are still planning mainly for a theoretical tank battle years from now,” he explained.

According to Smart, Europe’s path to stability still runs through Ukraine.

“Europe needs a coordinated strategy that links air defense, cyber defense, infrastructure protection and ammunition production into a single system designed for the attacks Russia is already carrying out,” he pointed out.

“And the fastest way to end the hybrid war on Europe is to arm Ukraine properly so that Russia is defeated on Ukrainian soil and the Putin regime loses the capacity to strike at Europe at all,” he added.

Many European governments are rediscovering tools of societal readiness once considered obsolete. Germany’s Defense Ministry has sent out a questionnaire to identify potential recruits. Poland has launched a voluntary service track. Denmark, Sweden, Norway and the Baltic states have expanded conscription to meet increasing regional pressures. France’s reintroduction of a service model marks a political shift toward integrating national resilience into defense strategy.

Spatafora sees these as pragmatic measures, while for Smart these shifts reflect a deeper recognition of geopolitical reality.

“France has a realistic understanding of the moment. There are regimes today that see a controlled conflict with the West as serving their interests, because their goal is to break the global system that made Europe wealthy and stable. They advance when the West is divided, hesitant and afraid of escalation,” he said.

By reintroducing a form of service, Smart believes France is signaling that the holiday from history is over, that its society has to be ready for sustained pressure and long crises, and that those betting on a weak, exhausted West may have badly misread the situation.

The question of why interstate war is again conceivable on the European continent—despite decades of integration, diplomacy and economic interdependence—is now central to academic and policy discussions.

For Spatafora, the root cause is Russia’s ideological and strategic orientation.

“The main point, as I see it, is Russian revanchism. European countries do not want to change borders by force; Russia does. Any attempt to resolve this peacefully in 2021–22 was rejected by the Kremlin,” he said.

Smart expands this into a broader critique of Europe’s strategic assumptions.

“Europe persuaded itself that power politics had ended, while Moscow prepared for their return,” he said.

“For years, Europe outsourced hard security to the United States, bought cheap Russian energy, and treated the wars in Georgia, Crimea and Donbas as distant problems rather than clear warnings,” he added.

He warns that Russia’s approach now aims to weaken Europe long before tanks roll across borders.

“Today Russia pours resources into stoking tensions and panic across the West through disinformation, energy pressure, migration crises and political interference with one goal: to keep Western societies divided and overwhelmed,” he noted.

When Russia escalates, Europe is too distracted and too fractured to respond with a firm and united strategy,” he added.

European leaders insist that increased defense spending and revived conscription are measures of deterrence, not preparation for imminent war. Yet analysts caution that the next decade will test Europe’s political resilience, industrial capacity, and societal unity.

Smart summarises the risks, explaining that exposure today is about geography and political weight.

“The Baltic states and Poland are physically exposed as NATO’s frontline, and as Ukraine’s logistical lifeline. Germany and other central states with key infrastructure are politically exposed, because if their resolve cracks, European unity begins to break,” he said.

“The most worrying scenario is not a formal invasion but a rolling campaign of hybrid attacks that fractures what Europe has built since 1945—so that when Moscow chooses to escalate again, it faces a disoriented and divided continent instead of a coherent alliance,” he concluded.

Whether Europe’s rapid rearmament, renewed societal preparedness, and emerging defense coordination will be enough is still uncertain. But policymakers across the continent increasingly agree on one point: the strategic environment that shaped Europe after 1945 has fundamentally changed, and the coming decade may define the continent’s security order for generations.