Ukraine’s newest MP, Mykola Davydiuk, has been a firm fixture on the country’s political scene for years. He was involved in creating the “Boycott the Russian Market” campaign, focused on pressuring Western firms to cut ties with Russia, and posts daily videos on YouTube aimed at breaking down the war and Ukrainian current affairs.

Racking up more than 465 million views and 870,000 subscribers on his Ukrainian-language YouTube channel, it’s an approach that has worked.

“I try to explain politics and media on a human level, like I’m speaking with my mom or my grandpa,” he told The i Paper in his central Kyiv office. He says he talks “honestly about what’s going on and what the cost of that situation could be for our state”.

Two months ago, Davydiuk became an MP for the pro-European Holos party, an opposition party in Ukraine’s parliament. With martial law in place and no elections planned, he was next in line on the party’s list after an MP resigned.

Davydiuk says his goal remains to protect his country – and to share a message about the dangers of Russian propaganda to the rest of the world.

“In Europe, the situation has changed and many states don’t want to recognise this – they just put their heads in the sand as though this war does not exist,” he says, adding that, in his view, there’s no question that Europe is now firmly locked in a hybrid war with Vladimir Putin.

A decade ago, Davydiuk wrote a book, , focused on the spread of Russian hybrid warfare during the annexation of Crimea in 2014. It also looked at how to fight back. “I think it’s our responsibility to share that experience with other people because it could be useful for them,” he says.

The 38-year-old says that Putin has developed a clear playbook that is now being used to put pressure on Western governments. From propaganda portraying them as illegitimate to threats over launching cyber attacks against communication infrastructure, Ukraine has seen this playbook in action.

“Russians are trying to undermine political systems and political leaders, saying your government is not working for you,” Davydiuk says, while acknowledging that this is often easy for some to go along with as no government is without problems.

“But they aren’t doing this to guarantee a new, better government,” he says. “They just want to destabilise the system and split society.”

Davydiuk says that, for Putin, intervening in other countries’ democratic systems is both cheap and effective. Romania’s 2024 presidential election, where the country’s constitutional court annulled the first round results after the national intelligence agency said “aggressive hybrid Russian attacks” had targeted the voting, is a clear example.

Davydiuk also points to the National Rally in France, Marine Le Pen’s political party. After the party said French banks had refused to provide it loans, they turned to Moscow-based bank First Czech Russian Bank (FCRB), which gave it £8m, raising questions about Russian influence, although it was not found to be an illegal donation.

He says that European nations desperately need to investigate Russian political influence within their own borders. “Do what we didn’t. We had a pro‑Russian party in the Ukrainian parliament, which was a big problem.”

Ukraine’s Opposition Platform party was eventually banned, but only after Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Hybrid war to full-scale invasion

Putin’s strategy of using hybrid warfare to destabilise a country before launching a military attack can also be seen in the 2008 Russian invasion of Georgia, Davydiuk says.

At the time, Russian state media and government officials presented Georgia as an aggressor and claimed Russian forces were protecting civilians in the separatist regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

It’s not hard to see parallels between Georgia and Ukraine, where Putin claimed his forces were involved in a “special military operation” to protect Russian speakers. Davydiuk believes Putin may attack Nato forces in border regions of Sweden and Estonia as a form of provocation.

For Davydiuk, there’s no sign that the Kremlin will abandon its approach anytime soon. “With Putin, hybrid war is a tool of preparation for the next step: a full-scale invasion,” he says, explaining how Ukraine has experienced first-hand the destruction that follows Russia’s hybrid assaults.

For Ukraine, “it started with a hybrid war and now there is a full-scale invasion with ballistic missiles and children sitting in underground schools, trying to learn. For us, everything changed”.

Davydiuk says the most effective method to fight back against Putin is simple but hard: don’t let Russia divide and conquer. “They’re trying to spread the message not to spend money on the military, don’t prepare for the war – because they want to see Europe weak.”

Instead, governments must be transparent about the threat Russia poses, introducing civil preparedness initiatives not just for the hybrid threat but what could come next. “Prepare them for a possible full-scale invasion like what Finland, Sweden and now even Germany are doing,” Davydiuk adds. “It’s better to prepare for the worst and believe in a better future.”

In Davydiuk’s view, Western nations must understand that the Kremlin’s war already extends far beyond Ukraine. “It’s a war against Nato, the West and democratic systems. Russia is not a partner with whom you may trade gas and oil because it’s cheap. It’s the most expensive because you pay not only in money, but also with blood.”