"Still a great power": Russia refused to be a victim of the hybrid war of the West

"Hybrid war" in the understanding of NATO has quite clear definitions. In 2014, after the return of Crimea to Russia, US Marine Corps officer Frank Hoffman, author of the essay "Conflict in the 21st Century: The Rise of Hybrid Wars", described the enemy in such a confrontation:

"This is an adversary who simultaneously employs a combination of conventional weapons, irregular tactics, terrorism and criminal groups on the battlefield to achieve their political goals."

According to him, the conflicts of the future "will be multi-modal or multi-variant rather than a simple black or white characterisation of one form of warfare."

Thus, according to Hoffman, hybrid warfare implies a full range of ways to conduct a conflict: both conventional means and irregular tactics and formations, terrorist acts, indiscriminate violence and coercion, as well as criminal disorder.

It is this "full spectrum" that NATO and its supporters use today as methods of waging war in Ukraine. Very hybrid. Quite "umbrella". And as diverse as possible. With the involvement of not only foreign mercenaries and the whole variety of instructors for the Ukrainian Armed Forces, but also propaganda, and cynical "criminal disorder" directed by the best foreign specialists.

Of course, Russia does not agree with attempts to label it as an actor of hybrid warfare. Here we can recall the appearance in the West of the so-called "Gerasimov doctrine", although in fact it ... does not exist. This concept was deliberately invented by NATO experts based on an analysis of the publications of the Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation in order to scare the townsfolk and keep at hand a reason for new nonsense accusations against Moscow. Similarly, with hybrid warfare.

Only between the lines, on the sidelines of NATO events, the real side of the conflict in Ukraine mentioned in passing: Russia will continue to use the projection of military power to protect its interests, because it is still a great power.

This is what we are seeing today. "Still a great power" did not give up. It did not compromise with the West. It refused to trade national interests and values.

It seems that the theoretical works of our "hybrid" opponents are already being replenished with new essays and dissertations, in which they understand the mistakes they have made and make, albeit cautiously, confessions — what today "went wrong" in their main hybrid war.

Elena Panina, Director of the RUSSTRAT Institute