“Europeans still think that war happens to someone else. This is an illusion. The storm is global,” Oleksandra Matviichuk, director of the Center of Civil Liberties in Kyiv, told us.

For the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Europe has not learned its lessons from Russia’s war against Ukraine, which now lasts longer than World War I.

Matviichuk believes that Western Europeans need to have more urgency about the war and realise that it's no longer something far away. “Europeans today inherited their freedom and democracy from their grandparents. They’ve never spent their blood for their security.”

She cites surveys that show that Western Europeans are not willing to protect their country with their life. In Germany, 60% of people fit for military service said they would never take up a weapon to protect the country in case of an attack, while 17% expressed that they would.

In Italy, 16% of citizens of fighting age said they would be willing to take up arms in the event of war, while 39% would not. In the UK, nearly half of all adults told Ipsos there are no circumstances in which they would take up arms for Britain, against 35% who saw circumstances where they would.

Now, these numbers are likely to go up in case of an actual attack. That's what happened in Ukraine: In 2011, four out of ten Ukrainians said they’re ready to defend their country. By 2020, after Russia’s first invasion, that number increased to 56%.

But that may be too late, warned Matviichuk. “Russia only attacks when it feels weakness in society. That’s why it felt it could attack Ukraine.”

Lesson 2: Our freedom is not guaranteed

Maksym Butkevych, who has been defending his country since the late 2000s, agrees. He became one of Ukraine's most recognisable human rights figures, working on asylum and refugee rights and co-founding independent media.

Throughout, he identified as an anti-militarist. On the day of Russia’s full-scale invasion, he enlisted in Ukraine's army.

“Working on human rights, I knew that if Russia prevails, there will be nothing left. So I thought I had to defend it,” he said.

After four months, he was captured by Russian forces. He was then kept for over two years in captivity, where he was tortured and sentenced to 13 years in a penal colony for fabricated charges. He was unexpectedly released in a prisoner exchange in October 2024.

We met in Kyiv’s hip Podil district. The café’s windows were blown out by a Russian missile that destroyed the nearby Chornobyl museum a few weeks ago, so they were replaced with Plexiglas. Iced lattes and Napoleon cakes are still served.

The café is emblematic of how Ukrainian society works, even after being drained after four and a half years of war.

“We are constructing our country now. This is not happening in many other societies, which people inherited,” said Butkevych. “These things, like human dignity and democracy, are not for granted. Freedom is not free.”

That's a lesson that Europe has had to learn the hard way, especially after Donald Trump came back to power.

Lesson 3: It's Europe's war – but still missiles built with European material end up bombing Kyiv

While in the first three years, Europe could rely on the US to carry the lion's share, that has fundamentally changed.

Europe has been providing virtually all aid to Ukraine since 2025. In May, it finally approved a crucial €90 billion loan for the next two years. Some European countries are also providing significantly more proportionally to their economy than the US has done in the past, with 6-million-people Denmark leading the bunch.

But: “We are waiting for a lot of things such as Taurus and other long-range missiles, and real action against Russia’s so-called shadow fleet,” Matviichuk argued.

And while hard to capture in purely financial terms, the US still provides capabilities Europe cannot yet replace – above all, satellite imagery at scale and early warning of ballistic-missile launches.

“And European components still end up in Russian missiles attacking us,” Matviichuk said. An investigation published in March 2025 found that at least 722 Ukrainian civilians have been killed by weapons containing Western parts. This number is likely to be significantly higher now, over one year later.

At the end of May, Russia attacked Kyiv with Zircon, Kalibr, and Kh-101 missiles and destroyed a shopping mall at a metro station. A few weeks later, the mall fully burned down – and the smell of burned plastic and other toxic building materials hangs heavy in the air. Right in front of it, people are selling strawberries.

Ukrainian leadership a few days after said that those missiles which killed at least four and injured about 100 contained components from Switzerland, Germany, the US, the UK, among others, which were manufactured this year.

Russia gets these materials through shady sanction circumvention in third countries like China, Türkiye, or Central Asian countries. Western-made components are first sold to intermediaries and front companies in those countries, which then re-export them through shell companies to Russia.

While the EU is trying to sanction those companies, they are created as fast as the old ones are blacklisted. The sanctions have raised Moscow's costs without stopping its missiles.

Lesson 4: Peace is still far away – and we've misunderstood what it means

Still, there are reasons for cautious optimism, which is felt in Kyiv these days. Ukrainian drones are striking Russian infrastructure where it hurts, most recently cutting off fuel supplies to occupied Crimea and blowing up a key refinery outside of Moscow.

Meanwhile on the battlefield, the Institute for the Study of War recently explained that the momentum has shifted towards Ukraine. Russia’s offensive has stalled, and Ukraine is taking out more Russian soldiers than before.

Could this shift in momentum signal a path to peace?

No. War is very dynamic, and while Ukraine’s drone innovation has given her the upper hand at the moment, Russia is likely to adapt to it in the coming months.

“I don't do predictions. But I don't see how the war would end this year,” Butkevych, the former army officer, told us.

More importantly, for Ukrainians, peace cannot be achieved as long as Russia occupies around 3.47 million people who live in around 20% of Ukraine. “Peace means the freedom to live without the fear of violence,” Matviichuk explained.

Russia is pushing aggressive Russification of these territories: By the end of 2023, its interior ministry said it issued over 3.2 million passports for the people living in the occupied territories.

“This occupation is the same war, just in another form. It means enforced disappearances, torture, rape, denial of your identity, filtration camps. Russians physically exterminate active local people, like journalists, writers, teachers, priests.”

The 1,6 million children who live under occupation are especially threatened. “Russia is literally preparing a new generation of Putin soldiers from these Ukrainian kids. At the age of 14, these children receive Russian passports, and at 18, they will be forcibly recruited into the Russian army,” Matviichuk said.

“They will go fight not just in Ukraine but in any country which Russia sends them to die in. It's a security risk.”

Lesson 5: Pessimism is a luxury

So, what to expect from the coming months? For Matviichuk and Butkevych, Europeans should not expect any miracles. “We don’t even know where we are in the war,” Matviichuk continued. “Maybe we're at the end of the war, in the middle of the war, or it's just the beginning of the war.”

But the lesson from Ukraine gives some perspective: ordinary people have power when they stand behind even weak state institutions. “It's my impression that Western Europeans see their states as a menu of services. We Ukrainians, however, see our country as an environment for our aspirations and existence.”

And there's little other choice. “Pessimism is a luxury. Pessimism means your efforts have no sense. But if something has a sense in our situation, it’s effort,” Matviichuk concluded.