Europe can learn from Ukraine how to break Russian myths

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 ever could. Today, however, Ukraine is systematically dismantling these myths on the battlefield. Europe's challenge is to absorb these lessons before outdated assumptions once again begin to shape its security policy.

Ukrainian long-range strikes have reached Moscow and St Petersburg, as well as strategic bomber bases and critical military infrastructure. Crimea, once 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 moment when Europe faces a strategic choice. Either it allows Russia to finally hit rock bottom and experience a defeat profound enough to trigger internal change, or it repeats the familiar 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 regime and with it the myths that fostered the continuous rebirth of imperialistic and dehumanizing regimes.

For more than three 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 term itself is effectively a local attempt at "import substitution" when it comes to western cognitive war concepts.

According to Andrey Ilnitsky, one of the architects of the theory and a former adviser to the Russian defence minister, mental 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 mental warfare as a systematic effort to reshape public consciousness, weaken state institutions, and ultimately alter an entire civilization. Military victories can be reversed; transformed identities are much harder to recover. That is precisely why the Kremlin considers mental warfare more decisive than conventional warfare.

In my recent brief for the European Policy Institute in Kyiv (EPIK), "Going Mental: Russia's Cognitive War Against Europe", I argue that Europe cannot develop an effective long-term strategy toward Russia without first understanding how Moscow understands the conflict itself. According to its own strategists, this is not merely a geopolitical confrontation. Instead, it is a civilizational – and thus existential – war. Russians are serious when they declare an "either them or us" game.

Russian strategists increasingly portray the collapse of the Soviet Union as Russia's greatest defeat in a "mental war". In their interpretation, the West conquered Soviet consciousness when 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 because they represent an alternative 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 merely a geopolitical challenge to Putin's system – it is a cognitive and semantic challenge. Ukraine's success undermines the very narrative on which the current Russian state rests.

Understanding how Russia sees the conflict also 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 strategic narratives that shape how Europeans think about Russia itself. These narratives – or what could be called "mind viruses" – continue to influence debates across Europe even after more than twelve years of war on the continent.

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 such 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 regime is simply the "better-known evil"

Both assumptions lead to the same conclusion: avoid putting real pressure on Moscow. Yet history tells a very different story. Russia has repeatedly suffered military defeat – from the Livonian War, Crimean War and Russo-Japanese War to the First World War, Afghanistan intervention and First Chechen War. Moscow itself has burned twice: first in 1571, when 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 myth of Russian invincibility in real time. More than four years after launching what was supposed to be a three-day operation, the Kremlin has failed to achieve its strategic objectives while suffering enormous military, economic 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 project – and recognizing that aggression leads to decline rather than greatness – Russia is unlikely to undergo the profound political and psychological transformation needed to break its recurring cycle of imperial expansion. Another premature "reset" would not prevent the next war; it would merely finance it.

Myth 3 - Peace can be restored through pragmatism and economic engagement

Europe has already tested this assumption. By 2014, Russia had been integrated into virtually every major Euro-Atlantic economic and political framework short of NATO and EU membership. It sat in the G8, joined the WTO, traded extensively with Europe and enjoyed deep economic interdependence with the West. None of this prevented the annexation of Crimea or, eight years later, the full-scale invasion. Economic integration changed neither the Kremlin's strategic culture nor its imperial ambitions.

Ukraine's experience demonstrates that Russia understands only the language of force. Ukrainian strikes against Russian energy infrastructure, strategic 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 pressure has achieved what diplomatic gestures repeatedly failed to accomplish.

Myth 4 - Ukraine should trade territory for peace

Russia's own negotiating positions demonstrate why this is an illusion. Moscow's demands have consistently gone far beyond the territories it currently occupies, extending to Ukraine's demilitarization, political subordination, and abandonment of its Euro-Atlantic aspirations. Territorial concessions would therefore not end the war. Indeed, they would only improve Russia's military position, weaken Europe's Eastern Flank, and create better conditions for the next phase of aggression.

Taken together, these narratives encourage caution when deterrence is needed, and compromise where resistance is required. While Ukraine is dismantling these myths on the battlefield, Europe must remove them from its own strategic thinking.

Dr. Elena Davlikanova is a Researcher and Senior Fellow with the Sahaidachnyi Security Center in Kyiv, and the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA) in Washington, DC. This article is based on her recent brief for the European Policy Institute in Kyiv (EPIK), "Going mental: Russia's cognitive war against Europe".