Russian President Vladimir Putin has been wearing down Ukraine in slow motion. While the airstrikes on Kiev on Thursday, February 24, alerted the world to acknowledge the invasion as a war, the truth is that Russia has long been waging a “hybrid war” against Ukraine. “That is to say a strategy that combines disinformation, psychological warfare, internal sabotage and a kind of ambiguity on the battlefield,” according to César Sabas, an expert in International Security at the University of Toulouse.
Some 150,000 Russian troops surround Ukraine, while Putin hopes that the rebel provinces of Donetsk and Lugansk will ultimately take control and depose the current president, Volodymir Zelensky. Here, in the 21st century, with an ongoing pandemic, we are witnessing the future of war, where attacks will happen in cyberspace supported by fake news, which will lead to unrest among the civilian populations. It is a war of nerves that encroaches on a number of different flanks and creates a situation that is impossible for the victims to bear, making it impossible for them to resist.
What does hybrid warfare mean? “In World War II, the war was fought only in three spaces: land, air and sea. Nowadays, there are five areas of conflict: land, air, sea, cyberspace and outer space,” explains Sabas. According to this researcher, Russia is a country that specializes in carrying out hybrid warfare. “This kind of strategy combines disinformation, psychological warfare, internal sabotage and a kind of ambiguity on the battlefield.”
Where does the concept come from? The hybrid warfare concept was first formulated in 2007 by Frank G. Hoffman, a research fellow at the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies. The scholar shaped it in a paper titled “Conflict in the 21st Century: The Rise of Hybrid Wars.” Hoffman has mentioned Hezbollah and Hamas as organizations having hybrid strategies, and Israel and Hezbollah and the war in Lebanon are considered hybrid warfare. In 2014, the concept gained notoriety with the Russian invasion of Crimea, and in 2021 the migration crisis between Belarus and the European Union was also described as a “hybrid attack” by the EU and NATO.
Ukraine knew. Ukraine had already faced massive cyber-attacks against key institutions of its government and economy prior to the Russian attack on Kiev. As early as January, the Ukrainian government was already talking about “hybrid warfare” with regard to what was happening in cyberspace against its institutions, noting that all evidence pointed to Russia. According to Newstral, “one of the services attacked in recent weeks has been the most widely used online site for managing government services, Diia, which also has a role in responding to the coronavirus in Ukraine and promoting vaccination.” On Wednesday, February 23, “numerous Ukrainian bank and government websites were taken offline due to a cyber-attack attributed to Russian forces. The same sites were also attacked on February 13 and 14, in an action that the United States and Great Britain attributed to the GRU, the Russian security service,” reported the EFE news agency.
The complexities of the conflict. According to a number of international analysts, Russia is expected to seize points that are key for the Ukrainian government, such as its main cities and strategic areas, including dams, airports and power plants. The idea is to force the Ukrainian government to capitulate quickly. Sabas questions the Ukrainians’ ability to resist Russian attacks because the Ukrainian army’s key weaponry is produced in Russia, so the enemy should be able to easily disable it. “The entire Ukrainian military infrastructure was built by the Russians, even its main port, Odessa, was founded by Russia. The Russians even know where the hiding places are. They know where to strike to disrupt any resistance,” he asserted.
What does Putin want? Vladimir Putin’s hybrid war against Ukraine is aimed at bringing the separatist regions, Donetsk and Lugansk, under a constitutional regime that is controlled by Russia. “Putin is betting that these rebels will be the ones to take over the Ukrainian government once they depose Ukrainian President Volodymir Zelensky,” explains the expert Sabas.
Economic attrition. Pressure on the Ukrainian economy is a key destabilizing tactic in what the government describes as “hybrid warfare.” “The Center for Economic and Business Research claimed that the conflict with Russia has cost Ukraine $280 billion of GDP between 2014 and 2020,” according to the AP news agency. Meanwhile, the United States has provided loan guarantees for US$ 1 billion, while the European Parliament has approved a loan of another US$ 1.3 billion to Kiev to cover its financing needs. Ukraine is one of the world’s leading grain exporters and its container ships move 12% of the global supply of wheat and 16% of corn.
