RUSSIA’S HYBRID WAR ON THE WEST

 The West is threatened by Russian hybrid threats … everything from meddling in political processes, (undermining) the trust in  political institutions, disinformation, cyber-attacks (…) and sabotage actions against critical infrastructure

President Vladimir Putin has made it clear he sees the war in Ukraine as part of a broader conflict with NATO and that his regime views the government in Kyiv as a mere proxy of the West. And with every increase of Western aid to Ukraine – whether through new weaons deliveries, or the imposition of new sanctions on Russia – the Kremlin has stepped up its saber-rattling.

Russia is resorting to a campaign of sabotage as an alternative to a full-on war with NATO, which would be disastrous for Russia. It’s long been a part of Russian military doctrine to try and avoid trying to face NATO on a battlefield, because they know they would lose to NATO forces. What Russia is doing is undertaking activities which are below the threshold of armed conflict, so they are not inciting an Article 5 response from NATO. By deliberately keeping the attacks below the threshold of armed conflict, Russia is hoping to sow more divisions within NATO because there is no clear blueprint on how to act.

Hybrid operations are part of Russia’s war effort to weaken Western resolve to support Ukraine and undermine unity within the West and in the long term, Russia might be gearing up for a more direct confrontation. Russia is, and has been since before the war, conducting these hybrid operations against NATO, the West, the EU, in tandem with its attempts to improve its conventional military abilities for a potential future conflict with NATO.

Russia’s goal isn’t as much about inflicting the biggest possible damage as scaring the local population. The aim is to break the will of the citizens and to break the support for Ukraine. Many of the attacks are accompanied by a disinformation campaign designed to deflect the blame from Russia. The disinformation campaigns appear to go hand-in-hand with cyberattacks. Multiple countries across Europe have suffered major hacks in recent months. What Russian cyber operatives are doing now is testing weaknesses within cyber security systems, planting malware, finding out where and how to attack without doing it now

NATO has for months been warning about Russia’s unconventional attacks on the West, saying Moscow is using espionage, cyber-attacks, electoral interference, disinformation and sabotage trying to destabilize the bloc and weaken its resolve to help Ukraine.

Russia has always been antagonistic towards the West. It goes way back to tsarist times, the idea of the West being a threat, that the West wants to do Russia down, to make Russia a smaller state, a weak state … so whoever you put in power in the Kremlin, there’s still going to be this mindset that the West is in essence the enemy.

The current Russian establishment’s hatred towards the West stems partly from the events following the fall of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, when Russia had to be bailed out by the West after its economy collapsed. The idea that Russia’s aggression will end with the eventual demise of Putin is the West’s “biggest mistake, because successive leaders will continue to see the West as an enemy until the country gives up the idea of Russian imperialism – which won’t happen easily. And Europe, and the whole international community who wants global stability, they need to understand that Russia is at war with us and that they will continue escalating unless we start acting.”