THE DECLINE OF RUSSIAN HYBRID WARFARE? LESSONS FROM UKRAINE

Abstract

Before 2022, many scholars held the view that Russia operated just below the threshold of war in pursuing its objectives in Europe. Important works applied the concept of hybrid warfare (HW) to argue that Russia prefers to wage a grey zone conflict rather than a large-scale conventional war. However, the invasion of Ukraine invalidated these assumptions. As a result, scholars now argue that HW is significantly less useful in analysing Russian strategy and operations because large-scale conventional war does not fall within the conceptual scope of HW. Although the European Union (EU) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) had previously used the concept to address Russia’s actions, they have also removed HW from their political rhetoric towards the Kremlin. This article examines the extent to which HW is a useful conceptual framework for analysing Russia’s war against Ukraine. The author argues that while the use of the concept in the context of the war is no longer politically advantageous, HW still provides a practical conceptual framework for analysing the war and, by extension, for informing decisions on Western defence policy. There exists more than one definition of HW and, depending on which version is applied, the Kremlin’s resort to large-scale military action does not mean that Russian HW is in decline. Instead, there is a shift towards an earlier understanding of HW, which puts a greater emphasis on using military force and violence. Consequently, since Russia keeps waging HW, the EU and NATO must not remove HW from their security toolbox, but rather enhance their defence against HW. To do so, they must increase their focus on multi-purpose defence capabilities and develop expertise in disrupting any adversarial capacity for multi-modal campaigns.