Russia has spent decades waging cognitive warfare against the West. Long before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Moscow invested in shaping how Europeans think about Russian power, escalation, military competence, resilience, and the limits of western action. Many of these narratives became accepted wisdom, influencing policy far more effectively than tanks or missiles always could. Today, however, Ukraine is systematically dismantling these myths on the battlefield. Europe’s challenge is to absorb these lessons before outdated assumptions one more time begin to form its safety policy.
Ukrainian long-range strikes have reached Moscow and St Petersburg, as well as strategical bomber bases and critical military infrastructure. Crimea, erstwhile presented by the Kremlin as untouchable Russian territory, is increasingly becoming a battlefield dominated by Ukraine’s Armed Forces. For the first time since the full-scale invasion, Russia is beginning to experience what it has inflicted on Ukraine for years – a war that carries real costs.
This is precisely the minute erstwhile Europe faces a strategical choice. Either it allows Russia to yet hit stone bottom and experience a defeat profound adequate to trigger interior change, or it repeats the acquainted cycle of premature negotiations, sanctions relief and another “reset” before the roots of Russian aggression have been addressed. Defeat does not require Ukrainian boots on Red Square. Instead, it requires the collapse of the government and with it the myths that fostered the continuous rebirth of imperialistic and dehumanizing regimes.
For more than 3 decades, the Kremlin has systematically cultivated a set of narratives portraying Russia as invincible, escalation as inevitable, compromise as the only rational strategy, and peace through accommodation as Europe’s safest option. This is not accidental. Indeed, it is the product of decades of what Russian military thinkers increasingly call “mental warfare”. The word itself is effectively a local effort at “import substitution” erstwhile it comes to western cognitive war concepts.
According to Andrey Ilnitsky, 1 of the architects of the explanation and a erstwhile advisor to the Russian defence minister, intellectual warfare is about transforming the trajectory of a nation. It targets identity, historical memory, values, traditions and the very cultural code through which people interpret reality. The military theorist Igor Karavaev goes even further, describing intellectual warfare as a systematic effort to reshape public consciousness, weaken state institutions, and yet alter an full civilization. Military victories can be reversed; transformed identities are much harder to recover. That is precisely why the Kremlin considers intellectual warfare more decisive than conventional warfare.
In my fresh brief for the European Policy Institute in Kyiv (EPIK), “Going Mental: Russia’s Cognitive War Against Europe”, I argue that Europe cannot make an effective long-term strategy toward Russia without first knowing how Moscow understands the conflict itself. According to its own strategists, this is not simply a geopolitical confrontation. Instead, it is simply a civilizational – and thus existential – war. Russians are serious erstwhile they declare an “either them or us” game.
Russian strategists increasingly represent the collapse of the russian Union as Russia’s top defeat in a “mental war”. In their interpretation, the West conquered russian consciousness erstwhile citizens exchanged their civilizational identity for “jeans, chewing gum and freedom of movement”. Now is the second phase of this competition.
From the Kremlin’s perspective, democracies are dangerous due to the fact that they represent an alternate model of society. A successful Ukraine poses an even greater threat. It demonstrates that a country sharing centuries of history, and close human ties of all sorts with Russia, can reject authoritarianism, dismantle imperial myths, and build a different political future. As the Russian political philosopher Andrey Okara observed more than a decade ago, Ukraine is not simply a geopolitical challenge to Putin’s strategy – it is simply a cognitive and semantic challenge. Ukraine’s success undermines the very communicative on which the current Russian state rests.
Understanding how Russia sees the conflict besides helps explain why so many western assumptions have repeatedly failed. Russia has not simply invested in disinformation campaigns or election interference. It has spent decades cultivating strategical narratives that form how Europeans think about Russia itself. These narratives – or what could be called “mind viruses” – proceed to influence debates across Europe even after more than 12 years of war on the continent.
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Myth 1 – Europe is not at war with Russia
Ukraine learned the hard way that if Russia acts aggressively against your state, pretending otherwise does not reduce the threat. In reality, Russia has been conducting sabotage, cyberattacks, election interference, energy coercion, GPS jamming, assassinations, influence operations and infrastructure attacks across Europe for years. The “Everywhere War – Sub-Threshold Warfare Tracker” has documented hundreds of specified incidents across the continent. Europe may not consider itself at war with Russia, but Moscow has long abandoned that distinction.
Myth 2 – Russia is either invincible or the current government is simply the “better-known evil”
Both assumptions lead to the same conclusion: avoid putting real force on Moscow. Yet past tells a very different story. Russia has repeatedly suffered military defeat – from the Livonian War, Crimean War and Russo-Japanese War to the First planet War, Afghanistan intervention and First Chechen War. Moscow itself has burned twice: first in 1571, erstwhile the Crimean Tatars set the city ablaze, and again in 1812 during Napoleon’s campaign. Defeat is not an exception in Russian history; it is part of it.
Ukraine is dismantling the story of Russian invincibility in real time. More than 4 years after launching what was expected to be a three-day operation, the Kremlin has failed to accomplish its strategical objectives while suffering tremendous military, economical and reputational losses. The real danger, therefore, is not Russia’s defeat but Europe’s fear of it. Without experiencing the failure of its imperial task – and recognizing that aggression leads to decline alternatively than greatness – Russia is improbable to undergo the profound political and intellectual transformation needed to break its recurring cycle of imperial expansion. Another premature “reset” would not prevent the next war; it would simply finance it.
Myth 3 – Peace can be restored through pragmatism and economical engagement
Europe has already tested this assumption. By 2014, Russia had been integrated into virtually all major Euro-Atlantic economical and political framework short of NATO and EU membership. It sat in the G8, joined the WTO, traded extensively with Europe and enjoyed deep economical interdependence with the West. no of this prevented the annexation of Crimea or, 8 years later, the full-scale invasion. economical integration changed neither the Kremlin’s strategical culture nor its imperial ambitions.
Ukraine’s experience demonstrates that Russia understands only the language of force. Ukrainian strikes against Russian energy infrastructure, strategical aviation and military logistics have arguably influenced the Kremlin’s behaviour far more than years of diplomatic engagement. Putin’s own rhetoric illustrates this evolution: from dismissing Ukraine’s leadership in openly dehumanizing language in 2022 to referring to president Zelenskyy far more cautiously this year. Military force has achieved what diplomatic gestures repeatedly failed to accomplish.
Myth 4 – Ukraine should trade territory for peace
Russia’s own negotiating positions show why this is an illusion. Moscow’s demands have consistently gone far beyond the territories it presently occupies, extending to Ukraine’s demilitarization, political subordination, and abandonment of its Euro-Atlantic aspirations. Territorial concessions would so not end the war. Indeed, they would only improve Russia’s military position, weaken Europe’s east Flank, and make better conditions for the next phase of aggression.
Taken together, these narratives encourage caution erstwhile deterrence is needed, and compromise where opposition is required. While Ukraine is dismantling these myths on the battlefield, Europe must remove them from its own strategical thinking.
Dr. Elena Davlikanova is simply a investigator and elder Fellow with the Sahaidachnyi safety Center in Kyiv, and the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA) in Washington, DC. This article is based on her fresh brief for the European Policy Institute in Kyiv (EPIK), “Going mental: Russia’s cognitive war against Europe”.
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