Alone we stand: How Europe can counter hybrid threats in a post-transatlantic era

Russian hybrid warfare has reached the heart of the EU. A report from the Dutch Military Intelligence and Security Service revealed that, last year, the Netherlands experienced its first major attempted cyber-attack on a public service. The agency also uncovered a Russian cyber operation targeting critical infrastructure, possibly as preparation for a future strike. Meanwhile, the Baltic Sea is facing increasing sabotage activity on the undersea internet, gas and power cables which connect European countries to each other.

In a parallel escalation, Polish prime minister Donald Tusk confirmed that a fire which destroyed Warsaw’s largest shopping centre in 2024 was in fact a Russian-ordered arson attack, potentially part of a wider pattern that includes a similar incident in Vilnius. These developments illustrate the growing operational range of Russia’s hybrid tactics: they combine cyber threats, physical sabotage and covert influence to undermine European security, exploit systemic vulnerabilities and erode public trust in Western political institutions.

And, with the war in Ukraine nearing a pivotal moment, Russia will only step up its campaigns in Europe. For the Kremlin, such disruptive activities offer a high return on investment: beyond the enforcement of sanctions, the EU has only limited retribution capacities. This dynamic is being compounded by America, once the principal transatlantic stakeholder in funding, resourcing and soft power projection to combat hybrid warfare, stepping back from its defensive imperative. Indeed, by undermining its own relevance, the US is effectively removing itself as a key deterrent.

In the European interest

Europe’s longstanding reliance on transatlantic cooperation for its security has become a structural vulnerability. As US domestic politics tilt away from multilateralism, America is defunding or dismantling institutions that once underpinned joint efforts to counter influence operations—such as USAID and the Global Engagement Center. The stagnation of the EU-US Trade and Technology Council, once envisioned as a cornerstone of digital cooperation, further underscores Washington’s retreat. These mechanisms previously facilitated coordination grounded in a shared recognition of the need to counter hybrid threats and a political will to act in defence of mutual interests.

Today, that consensus is fracturing under the second Trump administration, whose deprioritisation of multilateral cooperation and traditional alliances is weakening the collective response to hybrid threats. Furthermore, Europe’s geographical proximity to Russia and its often one-sided interdependencies—for example, European reliance on Russian energy resources and the existence of pro-Russian voices within the EU—make existing and future hybrid tactics far more disruptive within the EU than in the US.

In response, however, several European leaders are recalibrating their positions. Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez, while dismissing fears that Russian troops would “cross the Pyrenees,” has nonetheless stressed the urgency of defending Europe’s digital infrastructure and democratic institutions. Dutch prime minister Dick Schoof openly expressed his belief that the threat posed by Russia goes beyond Ukraine and increasingly manifests in hybrid forms. For his part, Finnish president Alexander Stubb urges more pressure on Russia so that Ukraine does not share Finland’s fate of losing territory. Indeed, the country has recently passed legislation that bans foreign real-estate acquisitions under the risk of sabotage or espionage.

European governments have come to a realisation: they need to prepare for a security environment in which US alignment is not guaranteed. In the absence of reliable US engagement, European leaders are reviewing their threat assessments and moving toward schemes that promote greater strategic autonomy vis-à-vis the US. As such, while the result of American decision-making is a vacuum of leadership and a loss of shared purpose, for the EU this presents both a challenge and an opportunity.

In this context, the EU has launched an ambitious plan to expand information-sharing and deepen internal coordination—moves that align with the White Paper on European Defence and its call to close strategic capability gaps.

Confronting hybrid threats

The challenge lies in building the institutional, technological and geopolitical muscle to withstand nefarious influence operations and sabotage campaigns without relying on US coordination or support. The opportunity lies in shaping a uniquely European doctrine of resilience—one that treats infrastructure, and digital and information security, as integral to sovereignty, democratic legitimacy and global competitiveness.

An opportunity lies in shaping a uniquely European doctrine of resilience—one that treats infrastructure, and digital and information security, as integral to sovereignty, democratic legitimacy and global competitiveness

With the US stepping back from shared security leadership, the EU matching ambition with capacity demands bold, targeted action. The following priorities can help Europe confront hybrid threats more effectively:

• Leverage the Neighbourhood, Development and International Cooperation Instrument to fund resilient infrastructure and counter-hybrid capacity-building in frontline partner countries, especially those vulnerable to information operations and energy disruption.
• Reinforce the operational independence and mandate of the Hybrid Centre of Excellence (CoE) in Helsinki, ensuring it can operate beyond shifting transatlantic threat perceptions and act as a reference point for EU-driven threat analysis and response design.
• Establish a southern Mediterranean Hybrid CoE in Spain, focused on countering influence operations in Spanish-language ecosystems, including Latin American actors and Kremlin-aligned proxies. This would fill a strategic vacuum left by increasing Kremlin investment and declining US engagement in the region.
• Expand EU presence and influence in high-risk regions like the Sahel, by empowering local civil society and independent media to improve access to trusted information and reduce susceptibility to externally driven manipulation. This region remains central to European migration and security policies, a key pillar of resilience in the face of adversarial hybrid warfare tactics.
• Lead the development of international attribution standards and regulatory frameworks, building on initiatives such as the DISARM framework. Coordinate with partners like Canada, Japan and Latin American and Caribbean states to establish clear norms for identifying and responding to hybrid threats.
• Operationalise strategic autonomy by enforcing existing legislative tools, particularly the Digital Services Act, the Digital Markets Act and the AI Act. Europe should also invest in sovereign EU capabilities in cyber defence, secure communications, and information ecosystem resilience.

Alone, together

The above is more than a bureaucratic transatlantic drift. It reflects a deeper geopolitical misalignment: an adversarial discourse marked by strategic denial, where conspiratorial narratives and ideological paralysis are shaping the US political and media landscape. While some transatlantic cooperation persists, such as ongoing cybersecurity exchanges and intelligence-sharing through NATO, political fragmentation and the Trump administration’s decision to frame counter-disinformation efforts as an attack on freedom of expression are beginning to outpace these efforts.

But within Europe, the issues of defence spending, sanction application and the use of frozen assets, as well as issues such as Ukraine’s EU membership, wider nuclear deterrence and US involvement in European security, remain divisive issues. For Europeans, America’s stance weakens the latter’s credibility in countering Russian hybrid threats and dilutes America’s ability to lead joint attribution or deterrence efforts. It also signals that further drying up of funding for multilateral initiatives is likely—leaving European actors exposed and under-resourced.

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Waning transatlantic cooperation is exacerbating Russia’s dangerous escalation of its hybrid warfare against Europe. However, the EU also has an opportunity to transform growing instability into resilience by leveraging existing instruments, establishing regional expertise centres and leading on attribution standards development. If successful, such an approach will help protect European democracies and infrastructure, and position the EU—and not the US—as a global leader against hybrid threats.