Russia and Ukraine: Putin’s Hybrid Warfare

Hiding your own intentions, blurring the line between war and peace, combining military and political pressure with disinformation: Russia’s President Putin shows how hybrid warfare works.

Russia is sending “peacekeeping troops” to Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin announced on Monday evening. The Russian state media carry this rhetoric out into the world; RT Deutsch reports, for example: “Putin commissions peacekeeping troops”.

What is supposed to sound like peaceful intentions obscures the actual events: Russia is violating international law and the state sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine.

Military, cyber attacks, disinformation

Multilevel obfuscation is a hallmark of hybrid warfare, combining traditional and covert military operations, political and economic pressures, computer attacks and propaganda, and disinformation. The arsenal of this strategy also includes blurring the line between war and peace – as has been happening in eastern Ukraine for years.

To this end, Russia – as in other conflicts – is relying on another means of hybrid warfare: “little green men” appeared in Crimea in 2014 – Russian soldiers without national emblems. While Putin initially denied any involvement, he later declared that he had given the order to bring Crimea home. For a long time, Moscow was also reluctant to admit that it supported the separatists in eastern Ukraine.

Added to this is the use of mercenaries in various conflicts. In Syria, they were obviously Russian mercenaries, for whom Moscow took no responsibility in cases of doubt.

cyber attacks

According to experts, cyber attacks are also part of the hybrid strategy – well-known examples include 2007 in Estonia and 2008 in Georgia.

Ukraine recently also reported extensive cyber attacks, and there were similar attacks in Germany, among other places. research by BR and WDR show: The tracks lead to the Russian secret service.

“Defending against such attacks is difficult”

The Federal Ministry of Defense writes that the hybrid strategy is either operated anonymously or participation in incidents and conflicts is denied. The threshold to an official war will not be crossed. “This is what makes defending against such attacks so difficult: If there is no clear attack or attacker, it is difficult to defend yourself.”

Analysts speak of one Low intensity conflict or in connection with the Russian troops in the border area with Ukraine by one “almost war”.

“Top priority for NATO”

NATO and Ukraine only discussed at one in October 2021 conference in Brussels about the topic. It was also explicitly about reactions to such attacks. “The ability to prevent, counter and respond to hybrid tactics by state or non-state actors is a top priority for NATO,” said James Mackey of NATO’s Political Affairs and Security Policy Division.

“Russia uses hybrid tactics to legitimize its occupation of territories,” said Sergiy Mukosii, head of the defense branch of Ukraine’s NATO mission. Hybrid tactics can include efforts to weaken public institutions and destabilize societies, alongside disinformation and cyberattacks, Mukosii explained.

False Claims

An important part of hybrid warfare is presumably staged events to fuel a conflict or create pretexts for one’s own actions, as well as the spreading of different narratives, i.e. stories.

Putin’s speech on Monday is a good example of this, because in it he developed various theses that ranged from historically questionable to false, as well as a long-disproved assertion about NATO’s eastward expansion.

obscurity as a goal

When it comes to recognizing the “people’s republics” on the territory of Ukraine, Putin again remains vague, making it difficult to react to his steps and reserving the right to escalate further.

It is not yet clear how Russia will define the borders of the “People’s Republics” recognized by Moscow. A tricky question, because the separatists only hold parts of the Donbass and Donetsk regions. Should Russia also regard the areas held by Kiev as part of the “People’s Republics”, this would be a lever for the next level of escalation: a direct attack on the Ukrainian army.

The Russian President is also acting – presumably consciously – unpredictably. “Putin sees a significant strength in this,” Russian foreign policy expert Vladimir Frolov said in a 2016 interview tagesschau.de.

Ambiguity as the central point

Political scientist Sam Greene says that the pressure on Ukraine, which Putin is constantly increasing, is that the Russian president has created the rhetorical basis for war, but is not saying so. He announced a military presence in the “People’s Republics” on the territory of Ukraine, but did not reveal which area he was talking about.

“The practiced strategic ambiguity continues,” says Greene. “We still don’t know where the journey is going” – and that is exactly the central point for Putin.

The hybrid attack on Ukraine shows that the former KGB agent Putin is a master of cover-up tactics – and is driving international politics in front of him. Putin keeps testing how far he can go with this hybrid tactic. The case of Ukraine shows: very far.