A document, written under the auspices of NATO’s “Economic Impact Assessment of Georgia’s integration into NATO”
project goes a step further to characterize Russia’s Hybrid War by
naming the mastermind behind it and how fragile frontline states, like
Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova are. The document concludes that both
countries are under constant and worrying pressure of criminal-style
military action, occupation and annexation of territories.
The mastermind is no other than Valery
Gerasimov, chief of general staff of the Russian Federation. On February
27 2013 in a magazine called the “Military-Industrial Courier”
(otherwise known as VPK) Gerasimov penned an article in which he
described how the Colour Revolutions and the Arab Spring changed the
conception of warfare and it was necessary to study these and adopt to a
new kind of war. In his exposé he envisaged the events of the Ukrainian
war:
- the creation of a permanently operating front through the entire territory of the enemy state,
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turning “disloyal neighbors” into dysfunctional entities by crippling the very foundation of their statehood,
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reducing the necessity for deploying hard military power to the minimum necessary, making the opponent’s military and civil population support the attacker more than their own government and country.
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holding the attacker’s own population in check by waging a permanent war, since it maintains the possibility of the permanent enemy.
The document summarizes Russia’s Hybrid War in four points:
- “First, Russia’s hybrid warfare is characterized by deliberately blurring the borders between war and peace. Obscuring the borders between the state of war and the state of peace enables Russian leadership to “subvert and destroy states without direct, overt and large-scale military intervention.”
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“Second, in hybrid warfare non-military means of subjugating your adversary be comes as important, or in some cases even more important than military means.”
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“A third, and equally important characteristic of the Russian hybrid war is the application of military means of a concealed nature”, which “also allows Russia to attempt to play the role of a “neutral mediator” in subsequent negotiations”
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“And fourth, Russia’s increasing reliance on non-liner means in achieving its strategic goals alters the usual pattern of irregular warfare.”, exemplified “In Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, instead of the inferior part using unconventional methods, now the superior part in the conflict is using them successfully.”nagypolitika