From Preparedness to Practice
Panel discussion with insights from Austria, Finland, Lithuania and Poland
Jun 17, 2026 / Vienna / European Security and Defence
On 17 June 2026, the AIES, together with the Embassies of Finland, Lithuania, and Poland, organised a panel discussion titled “From Preparedness to Practice: Implementing Societal Resilience against Hybrid Threats.” The discussions centred on the experiences of Finland, Lithuania, and Poland to identify best practices in hybrid threats response, crisis communication, and public engagement.
The welcoming remark was delivered by Nina Vaskunlahti, Finnish Ambassador to Austria. The panel discussion featured Andreas Schlegel, Deputy Adviser to the Austrian Government on National Security, State Resilience, Comprehensive National Defence, Crisis Prevention and Crisis Management; Annukka Ylivaara, Assistant Secretary General in the Security Committee, Finnish Government; Paula Rejkiewicz, Head of the Disinformation Unit in the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs; and Colonel (ret.) Saulius Guzevičius, Head of international cooperation and information support division public security service under the Lithuanian Ministry of Interior. The event was moderated by Michael Zinkanell-Süss, Director of the AIES.
The panel’s central theme was that hybrid threats have become an inescapable, normalised feature of the European security landscape, and that no country can fully shield itself from them. Speakers further emphasized that hybrid warfare operates across multiple, interconnected domains simultaneously, including information warfare, cyberattacks, energy and economic pressure, espionage, and increasingly, kinetic threats such as drones and balloons. To counter the underlying objectives of hybrid threats, which are sowing chaos and dividing societies, resilience must be built not only at the state level but throughout society as a whole.
A recurring key message was that effective resilience cannot rest solely on government or military institutions. It requires a genuine whole-of-society approach in which ordinary citizens, businesses, civil society organizations, and even young people are actively engaged and informed. Finland’s long-standing tradition of comprehensive security, educating all sectors of society since the 1960s, and embedding resilience into national identity, was repeatedly held up as a model. In contrast, Poland’s youth resilience councils and Lithuania’s emphasis on cross-generational education demonstrated how engaging younger generations, who are both highly exposed to disinformation and uniquely positioned to counter it, can strengthen societal immunity to manipulation.
Finally, the panel converged on the idea that resilience is necessarily an ongoing, imperfect, and collaborative process rather than a fixed solution. Speakers acknowledged the limits of current capabilities and the unresolved question of how democracies might justify more offensive countermeasures within legal and ethical constraints. The closing remarks emphasized that each country’s response to hybrid threats is shaped by its own history and context. Still, the shared commitment to trust, transparency, human rights, and continuous international collaboration will ultimately determine Europe’s collective resilience against threats that show no sign of diminishing.
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