Europe's defence planners are sounding an alarm that sits awkwardly beside years of Ukraine rhetoric: if a direct war with Russia erupted now, the continent could not sustain a long fight of attrition.

Officials speaking at a closed Munich Security Conference forum in Britain this week said public war-readiness is thin, industrial and political bandwidth is constrained, and NATO planning may have to assume a shorter conflict than Moscow could wage. The pessimism, reported by The Guardian, is tied to a broader fear that Russia is already winning a hybrid campaign — sabotage, cyber operations, disinformation — that softens European options before any conventional clash.

That hybrid pressure is colliding with domestic politics. Support for populist parties in major European military states is rising, and many of those forces are sceptical of Ukraine aid or openly sympathetic to ending the war on terms closer to Moscow's. Officials warned the trend endangers proposals for an "E5" group of Europe's top military powers — including the UK outside the EU — to coordinate air defence, deep strike and space early-warning as Washington prepares decisions that could leave Europe carrying more of its own conventional burden.

Munich Security Conference chair Wolfgang Ischinger framed the moment bluntly: Europe is stagnating while external threats grow "huge and existential," demanding deeper defence integration. Italian ministers separately described daily cyber attacks and warned of possible Russian interference ahead of next year's elections — language that would have been rare in Rome only a few years ago.

The Leipzig drone plot Germany has blamed on Russian-linked actors added urgency to the closed-door debate. Whether European capitals can turn anxiety into stockpiles, procurement and public consent — without fracturing over welfare-versus-defence trade-offs — will decide if the attrition warning becomes a planning assumption or a self-fulfilling prophecy.