UKRAINE: RUSSIA'S NEW ART OF WAR (original) (raw)
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Russia’s Hybrid War in Ukraine: Breaking the Enemy’s Ability to Resist
Since the change of power in Ukraine in February 2014, Russia has been swift to occupy and annex the Crimean peninsula. In April 2014, separatist riots broke out in Eastern Ukraine, following a very similar pattern to those in Crimea. These actions were accompanied by a strong and intensive, well-coordinated diplomatic, economic and media campaign both in Ukraine and abroad, also supported by pressure exerted by the large Russian military units lined up along the border with Ukraine. The form of warfare Russia employed in Ukraine in 2014, often called hybrid war, has been aimed at defeating the target country by breaking its ability to resist without actually launching a full-scale military attack. In line with contemporary Russian military thinking on ‘new generation warfare’, hybrid war is built on the combined use of military and non-military means, employing basically the whole spectrum of a state’s policy inventory, including diplomatic, economic, political, social, information and also military means. This report aims to seek answers to two main research questions. First, what are the main features and characteristics of Russia’s hybrid warfare as conducted in Ukraine? Derived from the first, the second research question is focused on the operational prerequisites for the Russian hybrid war. In other words, is the Russian hybrid war a universal warfare method deployable anywhere, or is it more country or region-specific?
The New Dimension of War – the Ukraine
2018
The article focuses on the hybrid conflict on the territory of Ukraine since 2013; its aim is to depict characteristic features of the hybrid war. The background of this article is the politics of Russia towards Ukraine since 1991, when this country gained its independence. In the opinion of Russians, Ukraine is a geopolitical misunderstanding, which openly violates the concept of “Russkiy Mir” (the Russian world). This means that Russia constantly aims at maintaining its sphere of influence in terms of the economy and politics in this region, as well as control over the military potential. Russia’s concerns mainly come from Ukraine’s desire to participate in some organisations, such as the EU or NATO. A real breakthrough was the Maidan Revolution and the annexation of Crimea, which resulted in the hybrid war in Ukraine. The analysis of the current source literature lets us draw certain conclusions, namely it gives us the chance to determine that the actions of Russia on the territo...
NATO-Russia’s hybrid war in the Ukraine theatre
2022
This paper outlines the underlying conditions of the Ukrainian theatre before Russia’s invasion in February 2022. The research firstly stresses the “conditional advantage” of the West upon the East at the end of the Cold War, underlying what the author calls the “legacies” of the Cold War. The focus of the paper then becomes the “scenario-planning” exercise of how the attrition between NATO and Russia might have become a conflict; how costly “boots on the ground” might have become and how Ukrainians could have not been able to live with a threatening foreign army deployed at its borders forever.
PUTIN'S INFORMATION WARFARE IN UKRAINE SOVIET ORIGINS OF RUSSIA'S HYBRID WARFARE
Russia has been using an advanced form of hybrid warfare in Ukraine since early 2014 that relies heavily on an element of information warfare that the Russians call “reflexive control.” Reflexive control causes a stronger adversary voluntarily to choose the actions most advantageous to Russian objectives by shaping the adversary’s perceptions of the situation decisively. Moscow has used this technique skillfully to persuade the U.S. and its European allies to remain largely passive in the face of Russia’s efforts to disrupt and dismantle Ukraine through military and non-military means. The West must become alert to the use of reflexive control techniques and find ways to counter them if it is to succeed in an era of hybrid war. Reflexive control, and the Kremlin’s information warfare generally, is not the result of any theoretical innovation. All of the underlying concepts and most of the techniques were developed by the Soviet Union decades ago. Russian strategic theory today remains relatively unimaginative and highly dependent on the body of Soviet work with which Russia’s leaders are familiar. Russian information operations in Ukraine do not herald a new era of theoretical or doctrinal advances, although they aim, in part, to create precisely this impression. Russia’s information warfare is thus a significant challenge to the West, but not a particularly novel or insuperable one. It relies, above all, on Russia’s ability to take advantage of pre-existing dispositions among its enemies to choose its preferred courses of action. The primary objective of the reflexive control techniques Moscow has employed in the Ukraine situation has been to persuade the West to do something its leaders mostly wanted to do in the first place, namely, remain on the sidelines as Russia dismantled Ukraine. These techniques would not have succeeded in the face of Western leaders determined to stop Russian aggression and punish or reverse Russian violations of international law. The key elements of Russia’s reflexive control techniques in Ukraine have been: • Denial and deception operations to conceal or obfuscate the presence of Russian forces in Ukraine, including sending in “little green men” in uniforms without insignia; • Concealing Moscow’s goals and objectives in the conflict, which sows fear in some and allows others to persuade themselves that the Kremlin’s aims are limited and ultimately acceptable; • Retaining superficially plausible legality for Russia’s actions by denying Moscow’s involvement in the conflict, requiring the international community to recognize Russia as an interested power rather than a party to the conflict, and pointing to supposedly-equivalent Western actions such as the unilateral declaration of independence by Kosovo in the 1990s and the invasion of Iraq in 2003; • Simultaneously threatening the West with military power in the form of overflights of NATO and non-NATO countries’ airspace, threats of using Russia’s nuclear weapons, and exaggerated claims of Russia’s military prowess and success; • The deployment of a vast and complex global effort to shape the narrative about the Ukraine conflict through formal and social media. The results of these efforts have been mixed. Russia has kept the West from intervening materially in Ukraine, allowing itself the time to build and expand its own military involvement in the conflict. It has sowed discord within the NATO alliance and created tensions between potential adversaries about how to respond. It has not, however, fundamentally changed popular or elite attitudes about Russia’s actions in Ukraine, nor has it created an information environment favorable to Moscow. Above all, Russia has been unable so far to translate the strategic and grand strategic advantages of its hybrid warfare strategy into major and sustainable successes on the ground in Ukraine. It appears, moreover that Moscow may be reaching a point of diminishing returns in continuing a strategy that relies in part on its unexpectedness in Ukraine. Yet the same doctrine of reflexive control has succeeded in surprising the West in Syria. The West must thus awaken itself to this strategy and to adaptations of it.
RUSSIAN AMBITIONS AND HYBRID MODES OF WARFARE
2018
The security policy of the Russian Federation has long involved elements of threat to neighbouring countries and forcing the hand of its political partners. In the last decade, Russia has used hybrid modes of warfare to instigate conflicts and instability in its neighbouring countries, while remaining below a certain threshold of violence, allowing it to dodge retaliatory consequences. The authors of the article indicate that the objective of the use of hybrid modes of warfare in Ukraine consists in blurring motives and actors in order to obfuscate a decisive and efficient response. This article argues further that these tactics, if used against a member of the Atlantic Alliance, would effectively allow such an attack to remain below the Article 5 applicability threshold, thereby making it difficult for alliance members to reach consensus on the characterisation of the attack. Even though the member states of NATO and the EU have not been direct targets of Russian actions, former republics of the Soviet Union can be considered to be in the danger zone, based on Russian political statements and its hybrid activities in these countries.
OBSERVATIONS REGARDING THE ACTUALITY OF THE HYBRID WAR CASE STUDY - UKRAINE
An atypical, Hybrid War is in progress on Romania’s eastern border pitting neighboring Ukraine against an “anonymous enemy” who is a master of the military arts, is supported by a systematized propaganda apparatus, as well as a political, economic and financial system that is sufficiently strong and so widely spread as to limit the reactions of the European third-party states as well as international political organizations. In this Hybrid War between Ukrainian and those “green men” of the Russian armed forces we are witnessing a paradigm shift of the political-military relations between Moscow and the NATO allies; the post-Cold War détente is gradually being replaced by the necessity of adjusting to the reality on the field, where Hybrid War is in full progress1. Key-words: hybrid war, total war, hybrid threats, national security strategy, strategic concept.
Land Forces Academy Review
In this paper we will throw a close look on the recent and contemporary military and hybrid phenomenons that curently shape both European and world security structure. In terms of security, seeing through the lens of intellingence and, at the same time, having a deep empirical and epistemological knowledge about the military events that occured near the European border, the world has had serious concerns regarding the russian foreign policy and its geostrategic plans. We will analyze the premises of the Russian military intervention, the hybrid methods used and most importantly what conclusions and valuble lessons Europe, NATO and the West had learned for the future. Moreover, we will see what policies led to these consequences and which strategies will be intended to support decisions and governance regarding the current threats. Systematically, we will try to reveal an efficient physiognomy of the risks, dangers, and threats and what could have been done to stop the current Russia...
A Geopolitical War in Europe: Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine and its Implications
Journal of European Studies (JES)
The security-insecurity paradox in a geopolitical struggle between Russia and its ex-territory; Ukraine along with the politics of the influences between great powers has made the Russian invasion a reality. Russian intervention in its periphery in February 2022 has sent shockwaves to the European Union and NATO members, and posed various challenges to the Eurasian states. The conflict between Russia and Ukraine is a protracted one, but this new phase is more complex and multi-layered. Russia’s annexation of Crimea and Sevastopol in 2014, and support to the militant separatists in Donbas, undermined Ukrainian sovereignty. A series of border skirmishes occurred during 2014-2021, which led to thousands of people dead and injured.[1] The tension converted into a humanitarian crisis with millions of refugees and collateral damages after the 2022 war. This recent situation can be termed as a geopolitical warfare, which is based on the politics of security to assert political advantages i...