Author: Mike Nova

AI Mode Conversation: UNGA 2026

AI Mode Conversation: Global News and Current Events

AI Mode Conversation: Russia – Ukraine war news today – 9:44 AM 9/22/2026

Murat Caliskan* – Paul Alexander Cramers**

Hybrid warfare is the latest of the terms/concepts that have been used within the defense community in the last three decades to label contemporary warfare. It has been officially adopted in the core strategic documents of NATO, EU and national governments and has already inspired many articles, policy papers and books. However, hybrid warfare is a concept as controversial as it is popular. Frequently criticized for being ambiguous and weak as a concept, it carries the risk of misleading the defense community and obscuring the sound strategic thought. Carrying out a content analysis over 66 media items, this study has demonstrated that hybrid warfare is indeed an ambiguous concept. It is revealed that the authors used hybrid warfare term in its true meaning only 20 (30%) media items. Most of the time (70%), the authors imply another concept when they use hybrid warfare. We believe, it is high time that international defense community built consensus over the actual meaning of hybrid warfare.

Key Words: hybrid warfare, content analysis, Russia-Ukraine Conflict, military concepts, military doctrines.

“Hybrid warfare” is one of the most widely used terms to explain or imply contemporary warfare. The term has gradually gained traction since its first use in 2005. Popularised by Hoffman (2007), it has almost become the “new orthodoxy” in military thought (Poli, 2010). Before Russia’s annexation of Crimea, the term was referenced widely as a model for contemporary warfare in defence community. However, with Russia’s operations in Ukraine, it has begun to be cited frequently as a “new kind of warfare”, circulating in distinct fora from newspapers to official strategic documents. It is frequently cited in media and even found a place in the official documents of the EU and NATO.

NATO’s adoption of the term had a huge effect on its popularity. NATO agreed on a strategy to counter hybrid warfare at the end of 2015 (NATO Foreign Ministers Meeting, 2015) as a continuation of its decision at the Wales Summit in 2014. At the Warsaw Summit in 2016, NATO announced its determination to address hybrid threats (NATO-Warsaw Summit Communiqué, 2016). A few months later, the EU developed a “joint framework”, focusing on its response to hybrid threats. Based on this framework, it established a Hybrid Fusion Cell within the Intelligence and Situation Centre (INTCEN), created two StratCom (Strategic Communication) task forces against disinformation and established The European Centre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats in Finland in 2017. The EU Global Strategy envisaged close cooperation with NATO on countering hybrid threats. A recent report on NATO-EU cooperation, developed through interviews with NATO-EU officials, identifies hybrid threats as a major challenge (Raik & Järvenpää, 2017).

Many analysts and academics have attributed the doctrinal thinking behind the Russian hybrid war to the thoughts of General Valery Gerasimov, Russia’s Chief of General Staff. In an article in 2013, he wrote: “the very rules of war have changed significantly. The use of non-military methods to achieve political and strategic objectives has in some cases proved far more effective than the use of force… Widely used asymmetrical means can help neutralize the enemy’s superiority. These include the use of special operations forces and internal opposition to the creation of a permanent front throughout the enemy state, as well as the impact of propaganda instruments, forms and methods which are constantly being improved.” (Gerasimov, 2013) Although he didn’t mention “hybrid warfare” or Ukraine in the article, he was later considered as “the face of the hybrid war approach” by many Western analysts. (Snegovaya, 2015) However, Gerasimov’s emphasis on non-military tools was aimed at describing the primary threats to Russian sovereignty, which had stemmed from the perceived US-funded social and political movements, such as color revolutions and the Arab Spring (Bartles, 2016). One of Gerasimov’s central messages was to reproach Russian military leaders for not keeping up with contemporary strategic thought and for being in danger of falling behind the West, rather than laying the foundation for a new military approach (Renz, 2016).

The amount of criticism towards the concept has been increasing along with its popularity. One of the main critiques about hybrid warfare is its ambiguity and weakness as a concept. According to this line of thinking, hybrid warfare is too inclusive to be analytically useful(Gray, 2012). Any violence can be labelled “hybrid” as long as it doesn’t have the characteristics of a single form of warfare. This causes the term to lose its value as an analytical tool to approach modern warfare. In some cases, this ambiguity makes it a convenient label to describe all the issues that we currently do not understand regarding the changing character of warfare (Puyvelde, 2015). Hybrid warfare became a catchall concept that allows “grouping everything Moscow does under one rubric”(Kofman & Rojansky, 2015). It became such an inclusive term that even the public statements made by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov can be labelled as hybrid warfare when he criticized the German police for the lack of transparency with regards to the alleged rape of a 13-year old Russian girl in Berlin (Renz & Smith, 2016). This broadness caused both Russia’s war in Ukraine and Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL)’s war in Syria to be grouped under the same category as a model for hybrid warfare. It is because of this ambiguity that the term has been used frequently but suggesting different meanings. Many analysts loosely refer to hybridity, but usually imply different meanings already (well known and defined under other labels/terms) simply such as ‘irregular warfare’, ‘propaganda’, ‘information warfare’ etc.

Therefore, we believe that it is important to inquire the soundness of hybrid warfare concept as it has already been adopted in core official documents. This study aims to understand whether the hybrid warfare concept is ambiguous or not through exploring what is really meant by different stakeholders when they use hybrid warfare. To achieve this goal, a content analysis was carried out on 66 news articles to reveal the real meaning behind the term. We need to note that this paper presents initial results of a broader study, which aims to analyse all media coverage from 2014 to date. Although 66 items are sufficient to formalize our thoughts, further analysis on a larger sample size would provide more robust and in-depth knowledge on the research topic. The first part of this paper presents various definitions of hybrid warfare and determines the definition to be used throughout this study. Besides, the definitions of some terms that are widely associated with hybrid warfare are provided. We believe that it is important to understand the definitions and the meanings of the terms for the consistency, objectivity and the reliability of this study. The second part explains the methodology, the sampling and the process of data collection. Lastly, the third part presents research findings and discusses the results.

1. Definitions of Hybrid Warfare and Frequently Used Terms

Hoffman defined hybrid threats as “a full range of different modes of warfare including conventional capabilities, irregular tactics and formations, terrorist acts including indiscriminate violence and coercion, and criminal disorder.” (Hoffman, 2007) For Hoffman, hybrid wars can be conducted by both states and a variety of non-state actors, by separate units, or even by the same unit, but operationally and tactically directed within the main battlespace to achieve synergistic effects both in the physical and psychological dimension of conflict. (Hoffman, 2007)

NATO members agreed in the Transformation Seminar-2015, held in Washington DC that “hybrid warfare and its supporting tactics can include broad, complex, adaptive, opportunistic and often integrated combinations of conventional and unconventional methods. These activities could be overt or covert, involving military, paramilitary, organized criminal networks and civilian actors across all elements of power.” (‘NATO Transformation Seminar’, 2015) The EU has broadly defined hybrid threats as a “mixture of coercive and subversive activity, conventional and nonconventional methods (i.e. diplomatic, military, economic, technological), which can be used in a coordinated manner by state or non-state actors to achieve specific objectives while remaining below the threshold of formally declared warfare” (Maas, 2017). Although both definitions are similar to Hoffman’s definition, there is an increasing emphasis on the broader aspects of strategy other than military, such as diplomacy, economy and technology. This is more obvious in the description of Russia’s Hybrid Warfare given by the 2015 issue of the Military Balance: “the use of military and non-military tools in an integrated campaign designed to achieve surprise, seize the initiative and gain psychological as well as physical advantages utilizing diplomatic means; sophisticated and rapid information, electronic and cyber operations; covert and occasionally overt military and intelligence action; and economic pressure.” (“Military Balance,” 2015)

One can easily conclude that with Russia’s war in Ukraine, the definition of the concept became more inclusive and tends to focus more on non-military factors, such as information warfare, propaganda, cyber security, subversive and non-kinetic means, while Hofmann’s definition was more about military issues and the convergence of different modes of warfare.

However, what is common in both Hoffman’s approach and later approaches is the simultaneous use of military and non-military tools. For any conflict to be named as hybrid warfare, it requires for either a state or a non-state actor to employ the integrated use of military and non-military (conventional-unconventional, hard-soft) tools to achieve a policy goal. In this study, any article that interprets the concept of hybrid warfare as a combination of military and non-military tools to achieve policy goals was accepted as a true approach.

Critiques of the concept argue that hybrid warfare usually refers to different meanings other than this hybridity. Furthermore, those terms that are usually referred have overlapping definitions as well. For instance, it is not easy to differentiate the meanings of information warfare, propaganda, subversive warfare or political warfare. To set a common understanding throughout the study, the definitions of widely used terms associated with hybrid warfare are presented in the following paragraphs.

Comprehensive Approach was defined as “blending civilian and military tools and enforcing co-operation between government departments, not only for operations but more broadly to deal with many of the 21st century security challenges, including terrorism, genocide and proliferation of weapons and dangerous materials” in the UK House of Commons Defence Committee report; (UK House of Commons Defence Committee, 2010) In a Chatham House paper, a broader approach including international actors is presented as the following: “the comprehensive approach is the cross-governmental generation and application of security, governance and development services, expertise, structures and resources over time and distance in partnership with host nations, host regions, allied and partner governments and partner institutions, both governmental and non-governmental.” (Lindley-French, Cornish, & Rathmell, 2010) NATO also suggests that “addressing crisis situations calls for a comprehensive approach combining political, civilian and military instruments. Military means, although essential, are not enough on their own to meet the many complex challenges to our security. The effective implementation of a comprehensive approach to crisis situations requires nations, international organisations and non-governmental organisations to contribute in a concerted effort. (‘NATO Topics: A “comprehensive approach” to crises’, 2018) Many analysts define hybrid warfare as “the comprehensive approach in the offense”. As NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg stated in NATO’s Transformational Seminar, Russia’s hybrid warfare can be seen as a “dark reflection” of comprehensive approach. According to this line of thinking, the difference between comprehensive approach and hybrid warfare lies in the aim. Comprehensive approach aims to build or to strengthen the governance, whereas hybrid warfare aims to weaken it. Another term that could be associated with both hybrid warfare and comprehensive approach is full-spectrum warfare. Indeed, a closer look on definitions shows that these terms are the same in their essence.

Political Warfare, in Kennan’s definition, is the employment of all the means at a nation’s command, short of war, in times of peace, to achieve its national objectives. Tools used in political warfare are non-kinetic in nature, whereas hybrid warfare connotes the combination of non-kinetic and conventional military means (Robinson et al., 2018). Political warfare includes all the tools of national power: diplomatic, informational, military, and economic. However, differently from hybrid warfare, especially military tools have unconventional characteristics, such as supporting proxy forces, providing conditional military aid to a state etc. In this study, hybrid warfare is rather labelled as “political warfare” when the author implied all diplomatic, economic, informational and military activities short of war rather than the combination of kinetic and non-kinetic activities.

Irregular Warfare is a violent struggle among state and non-state actors for legitimacy and influence over the relevant population. Irregular warfare favours indirect and asymmetric approaches, though it may employ the full range of military and other capabilities, in order to erode an adversary’s power, influence, and will” (Irregular Warfare Joint Operating Concept, 2007) What makes irregular warfare different is the focus of its operations – a relevant population – and its strategic purpose – to gain or maintain control or influence over, and support of, that relevant population. In other words, the focus is on the legitimacy of a political authority to control or influence a relevant population. (Irregular Warfare Joint Operating Concept, 2007) According to the DoD Defense Directive Number 3000.07 (dated August 28, 2014), irregular warfare includes: “any relevant DoD activity and operation such as counter-terrorism; unconventional warfare; foreign internal defense; counterinsurgency; and stability operations that, in the context of irregular warfare, involve establishing or re-establishing order in a fragile state or territory” (‘Joint Special Operations University Library’, 2018).

Unconventional Warfare is a broad spectrum of military and paramilitary operations, normally of long duration, predominantly conducted through, with, or by indigenous or surrogate forces who are organised, trained, equipped, supported, and directed in varying degrees by an external source. It includes, but is not limited to, guerrilla warfare, subversion, sabotage, intelligence activities, and unconventional assisted recovery (Joint Publication 1-02, 2001). Unconventional warfare is composed of activities conducted to enable a resistance movement or insurgency to coerce, disrupt, or overthrow a government or occupying power by operating through or with an underground, auxiliary, and guerrilla force in a denied area. Unconventional Warfare is one of the five main activities identified under Irregular Warfare (‘Joint Special Operations University Library’, 2018).

Subversive Warfare: subversion is an “action designed to undermine the military, economic, psychological, or political strength or morale of a regime”, according to the DoD Dictionary of Military Terms (Joint Publication 1-02 Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms, 2001). This is quite similar to the definition of unconventional warfare. It is noted in the same dictionary that “anyone lending aid, comfort, and moral support to individuals, groups, or organizations that advocate the overthrow of incumbent governments by force and violence is subversive and is engaged in subversive activity.” Furthermore, the dictionary maintains that “all willful acts that are intended to be detrimental to the best interests of the government and that do not fall into the categories of treason, sedition, sabotage, or espionage will be placed in the category of subversive activity.”

All three terms -irregular warfare, unconventional warfare, subversive warfare- are quite similar concepts in that they postulate the use of a broad spectrum of military and non-military capabilities by non-state actors to coerce, disrupt, or overthrow an established government. The main difference lies in their scope. Irregular warfare has the broadest meaning as it suggests the general notion of warfare between state and non-state actors and, in addition to unconventional warfare, it includes activities such as counter-terrorism, counter-insurgency and stability operations. Similarly, unconventional warfare has a broader meaning than subversive warfare because it contains more instruments than subversive activities such as guerrilla warfare, sabotage, intelligence activities, and unconventional assisted recovery. Subversive activities, as is suggested in the Cambridge dictionary, connotes the attempts to change or weaken a government by working secretly within it, which has the same aim with irregular warfare and unconventional warfare, but with more subtle methods through undermining social and moral integrity. Irregular warfare and unconventional warfare are similar to hybrid warfare as they assume the use of a combination of military and non-military tools; however, on the contrary, they suggest a struggle between a state and a non-state actor whereas hybrid warfare can be employed by both state or non-state actors. Subversive warfare, on the other hand, has the same goal with these two concepts, but less depends on direct military tools. All three concepts have common aspects with propaganda-psychological warfare-information warfare in the sense that the focus of their operations is to influence the relevant population. However, later three terms are only one tool -though very important- among others that are used in irregular, unconventional or subversive warfare.

Information warfare is the conflict between two or more groups in the information environment (Porche III et al., 2013). While there is not an official definition of “information warfare” in U.S. military doctrines, the Secretary of Defense characterizes “information operations” as the integrated employment, during military operations, of information-related capabilities (IRCs) in concert with other lines of operation to influence, disrupt, corrupt, or usurp the decision making of adversaries and potential adversaries while protecting our own (Joint Publication 3-13, Information Operations, 2014). Information warfare aims to use the information itself as the weapon. It is possible to use a broad range of tools to conduct information warfare, as it is inherently multidisciplinary and multidimensional. Cyber capabilities are just one of many tools use to carry out that task.

Cyber warfare has a more technical and narrower meaning and focuses on disrupting and disabling the computer and cyber systems themselves. It doesn’t represent a warfare alone but is rather a tool used in a broader warfare concept. In most articles, propaganda-psychological warfare or information warfare is used together with cyber warfare, because they are closely related. Since cyber warfare is only a tool in the realization of these concepts, throughout this study, the term will not be taken as a separate label for warfare.

Propaganda is defined as “any form of communication in support of national objectives designed to influence the opinions, emotions, attitudes, or behaviour of any group in order to benefit the sponsor, either directly or indirectly (Joint Publication 1-02, 2001). For Taylor, it is “the conscious, methodical and planned decisions to employ techniques of persuasion designed to achieve specific goals that are intended to benefit those organizing the process” (Taylor, 1995).

Psychological Operations are the planned operations to convey selected information and indicators to foreign audiences to influence their emotions, motives, objective reasoning, and ultimately the behaviour of foreign governments, organizations, groups, and individuals. The purpose of psychological operations is to induce or reinforce foreign attitudes and behaviour favourable to the originator’s objectives. Also called PSYOP (Joint Publication 1-02, 2001).

As the definitions demonstrate, propaganda, psychological operations or information warfare are closely linked and there is no big difference between the meanings of these terms. In summary, all three concepts focus on influencing opinions, emotions, and motives of a target audience. For this reason, these terms are frequently used interchangeably. It can be said that the information warfare has somewhat a broader meaning as it comprises the use of information-related capabilities additionally, even though the essence of the term is almost the same. For Tiina, it was because of the negative connotation of the term “propaganda” that psychological warfare was began to be used instead (Seppälä, 2002). The same explanation is valid for the use of information warfare when psychological warfare had a negative connotation as well. Another reason for the use of information warfare might be the increasing interdependency of communications systems with other infrastructures. Because of this similarity in the meanings of three concepts, we preferred the latest term, “information warfare” as the representative of this trio of terms.

Table_1 below depicts the comparison of above-mentioned terms based on some prominent characteristics of warfare to provide an easier understanding.

Table 1- Comparison of various concepts

It would be possible to say that all definitions have some overlapping aspects. To put it into a simpler frame, hybrid warfare is the most inclusive phenomenon of all the terms which requires the simultaneous use of both military and non-military tools, by either state or non-state actors. Comprehensive approach has a very close meaning, which differs only in the aim. Political warfare postulates the use of all non-military tools, although it may entail the use of military tools such as proxy forces and special forces from time to time. Irregular warfare and unconventional warfare are similar to hybrid warfare in that both include the use of a broad range of military and non-military tools, but in a different context, which is in a non-state actor’s fight against a state actor. Although subversive warfare is also similar to irregular and unconventional warfare, the tools used in subversive warfare are more limited. Propaganda, psychological warfare or informational warfare have also many common aspects with other terms, especially in the sense that the main goal is to influence the perception of the relevant population. However, the latter three terms constitute only one tool of broader warfare concepts such as hybrid warfare or political warfare, which postulate the use of all non-military tools.

2. Methodology and data collection

“The content analysis” has been used to examine 66 number of news articles in this paper. The content analysis refers to any technique for making inferences by objectively and systematically identifying specified characteristics of messages (Holsti, 1969 as cited by Bryman, 2012). It is an approach used to analyse documents and texts that seeks to quantify content in terms of predetermined categories and in a systematic and replicable manner (Bryman, 2012). For an objective and a systematic research, ten categories are predetermined and defined (Figure 1). Since the main objective of this paper is to understand whether hybrid warfare is used in tune with its actual meaning and to reveal what is really meant by the term hybrid warfare, it can be said that “the meaning” category is the most important one. All the terms that could be applied to this category have been defined in the previous section. This gives us the opportunity to determine what the authors really mean when they used hybrid warfare in an objective and systematic manner. As it can be seen in Figure 1, apart from the meaning of hybrid warfare, other categories such as the authors and the authors’ qualifications, the media and the media types, the country and the date where and when the article was published, the wars that are clearly associated with hybrid warfare, and whether the author associates the term with Gerasimov Doctrine are examined as well.

Figure 1_ Coding schedule

Data collecting has been carried out through the mixture of three different methods. In the first method, we used 32 news articles that we have accumulated in our personal archives since Russia’s invasion of Crimea. In the second method, we entered the term “hybrid warfare” in the Google search bar and examined first 11 news articles in the results. In the third method, we focused on some global and regional news magazines, newspapers and the media outlets such the Economist, the Newsweek, the Foreign Policy, Le Monde, Le Figaro, Le Point, Paris Match, which have an impact on the people who are interested in the world’s political and security affairs. In this method, we examined 23 items written in English or French.

Out of ten categories, which are shown in Figure 1, the only category that requires interpretation is the “meaning” category. As a principle, we examined the literal meaning of hybrid warfare without paying attention to whether the overall discussion in the article is valid or not. In some articles, the authors clearly stated what they mean by hybrid warfare. For instance, Paul J. Saunders, a former official in the U.S. State Department and executive director of The National Interest, -a Washington, D.C.-based public policy think tank, stated that “Hybrid warfare -the term applied to Russia’s particular approach to irregular warfare in Ukraine- is the threat du jour in international security affairs” in his article in 2015. In this case and in similar cases, we directly noted the term he used down to the meaning category, as he clearly sees hybrid warfare as a type of irregular warfare. No interpretation is required.

Some articles require more cautious interpretation. For instance, Peter Pindjak stated in 2014 in his article written for NATO Review Magazine, “As the conflict in Ukraine illustrates, hybrid conflicts involve multilayered efforts designed to destabilise a functioning state and polarize its society. Unlike conventional warfare, the “centre of gravity” in hybrid warfare is a target population. The adversary tries to influence influential policy-makers and key decision makers by combining kinetic operations with subversive efforts.” [emphasize added] (Pindják, 2014) The author implies “propaganda-psychological operations-information warfare” by using phrases such as “destabilize a state”, “polarize a society”, “influence policy-makers”. He also states, “combining kinetic operations with subversive operations”, which is a somewhat accurate definition of hybrid warfare. However, assessing the essence of the whole text, we can infer that the main emphasis of the author is on the propaganda-psychological operations-information warfare.

In some articles, the term is defined exactly as it is in the literature, namely as the simultaneous use of military and non-military means, but the author actually used the term to imply another term in the overall context of the text. In these cases, the term that the author really implies has been taken. Therefore, the research required a cautious reading of the whole text of the articles to understand what exactly meant by the author. For instance, Nolan Peterson begins his article, “How Putin Uses Fake News to Wage War on Ukraine”, with an example of how Russians used the text messages to influence Ukrainian military. Then, hybrid warfare is defined as “the combined use of propaganda and cyberwarfare to support military operations on the ground are hallmarks of Russian “hybrid warfare.”(Nolan, 2017) This definition, although it is not a totally true definition as it limits non-military means to only propaganda and cyberwarfare, could be accepted as somewhat true as it refers to a combination of military and non-military means. The author continues with General Breedlave’s speech where he defined the hybrid warfare as “the most amazing information warfare blitzkrieg”. Then he moves on to the Ukrainian President Poroshenko’s words: “Whether it is Ukraine, the EU, or the United States, Russia has the same playbook and goals. It employs hybrid warfare -so-called fake news, computer hacking, cyberattacks on critical infrastructure, snap drills, direct military interventions, and so on and so forth- to undermine the Western democracies and break the transatlantic unity.” Although the author defines hybrid warfare somewhat accurately and does not directly associate hybrid warfare with another term, we can infer from the overall text that the author implies propaganda and information warfare when he uses the term “hybrid warfare”. Therefore, in this case, we compromised on the term “information warfare” as the term implied in this article.

Frequently, hybrid warfare is mistaken for political warfare, which is associated with almost all instruments short of war including military ones.

As it is mentioned above, military capabilities in political warfare are unconventional in nature whereas hybrid warfare requires the combination of conventional and unconventional forces. For instance, in the Russia-Ukraine conflict, which is admitted as a model of hybrid warfare, Russia stationed its conventional forces ready to invade Ukraine at the border in addition to pro-Russian proxy forces in Ukraine. At a certain point, Russia even had to use its conventional fire-support against Ukraine forces. This is much more than supporting proxy forces or organizing resistance groups. Therefore, any article implying the use of all instruments short of war, including non-kinetic military units, will be labelled as “political warfare” unless it suggests any combination.

In some cases, the author used the term with no distinctive meaning. In other words, it is not possible to understand whether the author used the term in compliance with its true meaning or whether he implies another term. For instance, in his small commentary on the website of Carneige Europe, a global think tank, Andrew Michta stated “Russia’s application of hybrid warfare in eastern Ukraine is a recipe not so much for defeating Europe outright as for peeling the post-Soviet space away from the rest of the continent… So far, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s hybrid war in Ukraine has achieved two fundamental goals… If Russia decides to jump NATO’s borders and, for instance, launch a hybrid campaign in one of the Baltic states, this will force the West to grapple with questions about NATO solidarity…”(Michta, 2015) He uses the term but with no apparent meaning. These cases are categorized with “no meaning” tag in this study.

Some authors do not clearly define the term or use it in a right way but imply the true definition in an indirect manner. For instance, Alexander Nicoll states “it is necessary to keep in mind that this is not just a military matter. Hybrid tactics seek to undermine the foundations of a state, so it is important that all states look to their foundations and attempt to deal with issues and divisions that could be exploited by an adversary -and that if necessary, they get help in doing this.” (Nicoll, 2015) In this commentary, Alexander does not directly use a definition that connotes a simultaneous use of military and non-military means. But he notes that hybrid tactics are activities to undermine the foundations of a state in addition to military activities. He doesn’t suggest a simultaneous use of both military and non-military tools or he doesn’t imply all non-military tools except from those undermining state foundations. However, he somehow suggests a combined use. Therefore, these kinds of cases are admitted as a correct use of the term as well.

3. Research Findings and Discussion

This study presents preliminary part of a broader project, which aims to examine all media coverage of hybrid warfare concept between 2014-2018. Although the current number of media items (66 at total) is limited and some subjects remained in shadow, we believe that it is sufficient to give an idea about the implications of the use of hybrid warfare, which is the main goal of this paper. Table-2 demonstrates the results regarding the “meaning” category.

Table 2- Results for the “meaning” category

The results show that in only 20 (30%) media items, the term “hybrid warfare” is used in its true meaning. In other items, the authors used the term “hybrid warfare” but they implied “information warfare” in 18 (27%) items, “political warfare” in 14 (21%) items, “unconventional warfare” in 5 (6%) items. The results clearly demonstrate that hybrid warfare is an ambiguous concept and is not clearly understood by different stakeholders in defense community. In other words, there is not an agreed definition or understanding. Most of the time (70%), the authors imply another concept when they use hybrid warfare.

These results suggest two potential reasons for the miscommunication. It is either because the authors have insufficient knowledge on military concepts or the concept is too weak to explain current events that the authors imply different meanings. We believe that both options are valid. For instance, hybrid warfare is confused with political warfare in 14 media items, which is understandable as there is a similarity between two terms. Although it is author’s responsibility to know the difference between two terms, big part of the problem stems from the broadness of the term. Hybrid concept has such an inclusive definition that it allows authors to label any conflict as hybrid warfare even when the conflict in question includes only some part of the all characteristics. However, mistaking hybrid warfare for information warfare is a clear indication of the authors’ lack of knowledge on military concepts as there is a clear difference between two terms.

Table 3- The Results of “author”, “media type” and “country” categories

As it is shown in Table-3, there is no meaningful difference between academics and journalists in their capacity to use the term in its proper meaning. In both groups, only 29% of the population uses the term correctly, which is very close to the general average (30%). This ratio is even less in other groups, namely in experts or officials (11%-14%). Similarly, media types also do not suggest a meaningful difference in terms of correct use of the term. It is likely to infer in-depth implications if the sample size is enlarged. But current numbers do not suggest any implication.

Having said that, we could infer that defense focused media (40%) is better than non-defense focused media (27%) in using the term in a correct manner.

Table 4- The Results of “wars associated” and “Gerasimov Doctrine” categories

Regarding the examples of wars associated with hybrid warfare, there are two important issues that are worth to be discussed. Firstly, half of the authors refer to Russia-Ukraine Conflict (47%) as the prominent example of hybrid warfare. A closer look on the articles shows that often time Russia-Ukraine Conflict is the only example in many articles that the authors discussed in detail with a reference to hybrid warfare. Other examples are usually given as series of examples in the same text, but not as a major example that models the hybrid warfare concept. Furthermore, two other examples, “Russia’s recent activities against West or NATO”, are also closely related to the Russia-Ukraine Conflict. In short, these data verify the argument that “Russian-Ukraine Conflict is perceived by international community as a model for hybrid warfare.” The other important issue that is implied in the results is the variety of the examples. Examples are so distinct in their types that they range from “ISIL’s Warfare in Syria” to the “Soviet invasion of Afghanistan”. This is another indication of the broadness and ambiguity of the concept.

Lastly, there are 9 articles (14%) that attributes the hybrid warfare concept to Gerasimov Doctrine, which is not a correct way of explaining the origins of the concept as mentioned in the first part of the paper. This is an important ratio- although not as high as we expected- that denotes the insufficient knowledge of the authors.

4. Conclusion

As Hew Strachan noted, “Words convey concepts: if they are not defined, the thinking about them cannot be clear… Such ambiguity creates confusion within individual nations, let alone alliances ostensibly speaking a common language” (Strachan, 2013) Indeed, as words convey concepts, concepts shape our defence understanding, and thus our armed forces, doctrines and the way that armed forces fight. Recently, as one of the most widely used terms in defense community as well as in the core documents of the EU and NATO, hybrid warfare is the leading concept to shape our defense understanding. However, hybrid warfare is a concept as controversial as it is popular. Frequently criticized for being ambiguous and weak as a concept, it carries the risk of misleading the defence community and obscuring the sound strategic thought.

This study demonstrated that hybrid warfare is an ambiguous term. According to the results of the content analysis conducted in this paper, 70% of the time, authors imply different concepts even though they used the term hybrid warfare. Under these circumstances, it requires to be too optimistic for a sound discussion in the defense community, where people cannot speak the same language. It is understandable, even commendable, that analysts endeavour to grasp and conceptualize contemporary warfare. However, the opportunity cost of misconception is too high, as it creates confusion rather than clarity. Considering the increasing number of terms to describe warfare in the last three decades, we believe, it is high time that international defence community built consensus over the actual meaning of hybrid warfare.

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*Non-resident Research Fellow at Beyond the Horizon, PhD Student in Université de Catholique Louvain ↑

**Master student in international security and defence at Institut Libre d’Etude des Relations Internationales (ILERI) ↑

Russian hybrid warfare has escalated into a direct threat to global security, with European intelligence and political leaders warning that Moscow’s shadow operations have shifted from covert disruption to overt physical destruction. Historically defined as a mix of non-military pressure tactics—such as cyberattacks, disinformation, and economic coercion—the Kremlin’s playbook in September 2026 is increasingly characterized by highly kinetic, state-sponsored aggression across Europe designed to weaken Western support for Ukraine.

The Evolution of the Threat: Moving Beyond “Hybrid”

While early definitions of Russian hybrid warfare focused on deniable activities like using unmarked “little green men” in Crimea or weaponizing energy supplies, recent intelligence reports indicate a tactical shift. European officials argue that the term “hybrid war” has become a political sedative that understates the threat. The campaign has effectively crossed the threshold into kinetic state-sponsored terrorism, featuring physical violence and sabotage.

The escalation is primarily driven by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s need to overcompensate for stalled conventional breakthroughs on the battlefield and the impact of Ukrainian strikes on Russian domestic infrastructure.

Major Tactial Pillars of Russia’s Current Shadow War

Recent intelligence assessments highlight a quadrupling of Russian hybrid operations in Europe, primarily targeting several vulnerable vectors:

• Physical Sabotage & Arson: Operations have escalated to violent plots, including an assassination attempt against a European defense executive, attempts to bomb or derail railway networks in Poland, and a Russian intelligence plot utilizing explosive devices to target commercial cargo planes in Germany.
• Airspace Incursions & Intimidation: Unauthorized Russian military drones and surveillance aircraft have frequently breached the sovereign airspace of NATO members, including Lithuania, Germany, and Luxembourg.
• Critical Infrastructure Targeting: Hostile actors have systematically targeted power networks, water plants, and critical underwater cables. A recent operation in Poland nearly forced the total shutdown of the nation’s energy grid.
• Information Warfare & Subversion: Long-standing campaigns involving weaponized migration, election interference, and digital disinformation continue alongside cyber strikes to erode public trust in democratic institutions.

Global and European Responses

The aggressive nature of these attacks has triggered coordinated warnings and defense overhauls across the West:

Implications for NATO and the International Order

The primary geostrategic objective of Russia’s shadow strategy is to paralyze NATO’s motivation. By carrying out deniable or proxy-led operations just below the threshold of conventional military conflict, Moscow aims to test the limits of NATO’s Article 5 mutual defense clause.

Security experts emphasize that Western allies can no longer treat domestic infrastructure defense and the conventional war in Ukraine as separate issues. Effectively deterring Russia requires a unified grand strategy that significantly increases the legal, economic, and political costs for Moscow on every front where the Kremlin tests Western resolve.

Vladimir Putin was annoyed – or maybe just bored. The Russian leader had been patiently fielding questions from a small group of international journalists in the restaurant of a modest hotel in Davos. Then one of the queries seemed to irritate him. He stared back at the questioner, an American, and said slowly, through an interpreter: “I’ll answer that question in a minute. But first let me ask you about the extraordinary ring you have on your finger.”

All heads in the room swivelled. “Why is the stone so large?” Putin continued. A few of the audience began to giggle and the journalist looked uncomfortable. Putin took on a tone of mock sympathy and continued: “You surely don’t mind me asking, because you wouldn’t be wearing something like that unless you were trying to draw attention to yourself?” There was more laughter. By now, the original question had been forgotten. It was a masterclass in distraction and bullying.

The year was 2009, and Putin had already been in power for almost a decade. But this was my first encounter with him in the flesh, during his visit to the World Economic Forum. Putin’s ability to radiate menace, without raising his voice, was striking. But so was the laughter of his audience. Despite the violence of his Russian government – as demonstrated in Chechnya and Georgia – western opinion-formers were still inclined to treat him as a pantomime villain.

I was reminded of this just before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In a televised meeting at the Kremlin with his closest advisers, Putin toyed with Sergei Naryshkin, the head of his foreign intelligence service – making the feared securocrat look like a stuttering fool. The pleasure he took in humiliating somebody in front of an audience was once again on display. But this time, nobody was laughing. Putin was about to plunge Europe into its biggest land war since 1945. Russian troops launched a full-scale invasion on 24 February. Within a month, more than 10 million Ukrainians had fled their homes, thousands of troops and civilians had been killed and the coastal city of Mariupol had been destroyed.

Even though western intelligence services had warned for months that Russia was poised to attack, many experienced Putin-watchers, both in Russia and the west, refused to believe it. After more than 20 years of his leadership, they felt that they understood Putin. He was ruthless and violent, no doubt, but he was also believed to be rational, calculating and committed to Russia’s integration into the world economy. Few believed he was capable of such a reckless gamble.

Looking back, however, it is clear that the outside world has consistently misread him. From the moment he took power, outsiders too often saw what they wanted and played down the darkest sides of Putinism.

In fact, the outside world’s indulgence of Putin went much further than simply turning a blind eye to his excesses. For a rising generation of strongman leaders and cultural conservatives outside Russia, Putin became something of a hero and a role model. As his admirers saw it, the Russian leader had inherited a country humiliated by the breakup of the Soviet Union. Through strength and cunning, he had restored its status and global power, and even regained some of the territory lost when the USSR broke up. And he had delighted nationalists and populists the world over by successfully defying self-righteous American liberals such as Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s spokesman, was not simply spouting propaganda when he said in 2018: “There’s a demand in the world for special, sovereign leaders, for decisive ones … Putin’s Russia was the starting point.”

Xi Jinping admires Putin’s strongman leadership style

The Putin fanclub has had numerous members in the west over the years. Rudy Giuliani, President Trump’s close adviser and lawyer, expressed admiration for Putin’s annexation of Crimea, remarking: “He makes a decision and he executes it, quickly. That’s what you call a leader.” Nigel Farage, the former leader of Ukip and the Brexit party, and a friend of Donald Trump, once named Putin the world leader he most admired, adding: “The way he played the whole Syria thing. Brilliant. Not that I approve of him politically.” Matteo Salvini, the leader of the populist right Northern League party and a former deputy prime minister of Italy, flaunted his admiration for the Russian leader by being photographed in a Putin T-shirt in Red Square. Rodrigo Duterte, the president of the Philippines, has said, “My favourite hero is Putin.”

Most important of all, Xi Jinping is also a confirmed admirer. A week after being appointed as president of China in early 2013, Xi made his first state visit overseas – choosing to visit Putin in Moscow. On 4 February 2022, just 20 days before the invasion of Ukraine, Putin met Xi in Beijing for their 38th summit meeting. Shortly afterwards, Russia and China announced a “no limits” partnership. As the joint Russian-Chinese statement made clear, the two leaders are united in their hostility to American global power and to the pro-democracy “colour revolutions” they accuse Washington of stirring up around the world – from Ukraine to Hong Kong. Putin and Xi are both strongman rulers who have centralised power around themselves and encouraged a cult of personality. They are, as Alexander Gabuev, a Russian academic, puts it, “the tsar and the emperor”. Whether this partnership of strongmen will survive the Russian invasion of Ukraine is now one of the most important questions in international politics.

Putin was sworn into office as president of Russia on 31 December 1999. But at first it was not obvious that he would last very long in the job, let alone that he would emerge as the most aggressive challenger to the western liberal order and the pioneer of a new model of authoritarian leadership. As the chaotic Yeltsin era of the 1990s drew to a close, Putin’s ascent to the top job was eased by his former colleagues in the KGB. But he also had the approval of Russia’s richest and most powerful people, the oligarchs, who saw him as a capable administrator and “safe pair of hands” who would not threaten established interests.

Viewed from the west, Putin looked relatively reassuring. In his first televised speech from the Kremlin, given on New Year’s Eve 1999, just a few hours after taking over from Yeltsin, Putin promised to “protect freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, freedom of the mass media, ownership rights, these fundamental elements of a civilised society”. In March 2000, he won his first presidential election and proudly asserted: “We have proved that Russia is becoming a modern democratic state.” When Bill Clinton met Putin in the Kremlin for the first time, in June 2000, he declared his Russian counterpart “fully capable of building a prosperous, strong Russia, while preserving freedom and pluralism and the rule of law”.

Yet while Putin may initially have found it convenient to use the rhetoric of liberal democracy, his early actions as president told a different story. In his first year in office, he moved immediately to rein in independent sources of power, to assert the central authority of the state and to use warfare to bolster his own personal position – all actions that were to become hallmarks of Putinism. The escalation of the war in Chechnya made Putin seem like a nationalist hero, standing up for Russian interests and protecting the ordinary citizen from terrorism. In an early move that alarmed liberals, the new president reinstated the old Soviet national anthem. His promises to protect media freedom turned out to be empty: Russia’s few independent television networks were brought under government control.

As Putin established himself in office, the image-makers got to work crafting a strongman persona for him. Gleb Pavlovsky, one of Putin’s first spin doctors, later described him as a “quick learner” and a “talented actor”. Key images were placed in the Russian media and around the world: Putin on horseback, Putin practising judo, Putin arm-wrestling or strolling bare-chested by a river in Siberia. These photographs attracted mockery from intellectuals and cynics. But the president’s handlers were clear-eyed. As Pavlovsky later told the Washington Post, the goal was to ensure that “Putin corresponds ideally to the Hollywood image of a saviour-hero”.

In any case, Russians were more than ready for a strongman to ride to their rescue. The collapse of the Soviet system in 1991 had allowed for the emergence of democracy and freedom of speech. But as the economy atrophied and then fell apart, many experienced a severe drop in living standards and personal security. By 1999, life expectancy for Russian men had fallen by three and a half years to below 60. A UN report attributed this to a “rise in self-destructive behaviour”, which it linked to “rising poverty rates, unemployment and financial insecurity”. Under those circumstances, a decisive leader who promised to turn back the clock had real appeal.

Long before Trump promised to “make America great again”, Putin was promising to bring back the stability and pride of the Soviet era to those Russians who had lost out in the 1990s. But his nostalgia was not restricted to the social cohesion of Soviet times. Putin also yearned to restore some of the USSR’s lost international clout. In a speech in 2005, Putin labelled the collapse of the Soviet Union “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century”. As the years have passed, he has become increasingly preoccupied by Russian history. In the summer of 2021, he published a long essay entitled On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians – which, even at the time, some saw as a manifesto for invasion. Delving through centuries of history, Putin attempted to prove that Ukraine was an artificial state and that “Russia was robbed, indeed” when Ukraine gained independence in 1991.

Fyodor Lukyanov, an academic who is close to the Russian leader, told me in 2019 that one of Putin’s enduring fears was the loss of Russia’s status as one of the world’s great powers for the first time in centuries. His resentment at what he regarded as American slights and betrayals set Putin on a collision course with the west. A landmark moment came with a speech he gave at the Munich Security Conference in 2007.

That speech was a direct challenge to the west and an expression of cold fury. He accused the US of an “almost uncontained hyper use of force – military force – in international relations, force that is plunging the world into an abyss of permanent conflicts”. The Putin of 2000, who had expressed pride at Russia’s transformation into a modern democracy, had given way to a man who denounced western talk of freedom and democracy as a hypocritical front for power politics.

The Munich speech was not just an angry reflection on the past. It also pointed the way to the future. The Russian president had put the west on notice that he intended to fight back against the US-led world order. It foreshadowed a lot of what was to come: Russia’s military intervention in Georgia in 2008, its annexation of Crimea in 2014, its dispatch of troops to Syria in 2015, its meddling in the US presidential election of 2016. All of these actions burnished Putin’s reputation as a nationalist and a strong leader. They also made him an icon for strongmen throughout the world who rejected western leadership and the “liberal international order”.

This indictment of the west goes back to the 1990s. It is argued repeatedly in Moscow that the expansion of Nato to take in countries of the former Soviet empire (including Poland and the Baltic states) was a direct contradiction of promises made after the end of the cold war. Nato’s intervention in the Kosovo war of 1998‑9 added to the list of grievances proving, in the Kremlin’s eyes, both that Nato is an aggressor and that western talk of respecting sovereignty and state borders was nothing but hypocrisy. Russians were not reassured by the western riposte that Nato was acting in response to ethnic cleansing and human rights abuses by Serbia. As one liberal Russian politician put it to me in 2008, in a moment of frankness: “We know we have committed human rights abuses in Chechnya. If Nato can bomb Belgrade for that, why could they not bomb Moscow?”

Putin’s case against Nato also takes in the Iraq war launched by the US and many of its allies in 2003. For him, the massive bloodshed in Iraq was proof that the west’s self-proclaimed pursuit of “democracy and freedom” only brings instability and suffering in its wake. If you mention the brutal behaviour of Russian forces in Chechnya or Syria in Moscow, you will always have the Iraq war thrown back in your face.

Crucially, the west’s promotion of democracy has posed a direct threat to Putin’s own political and personal survival. From 2003 to 2005, pro-democracy “colour revolutions” broke out in many of the states of the former Soviet Union – including Ukraine, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan. If demonstrators in Independence Square in Kyiv could bring down an autocratic government in Ukraine, what was to stop the same happening in Red Square? In Russia, many believed it was a “fairytale” that these were spontaneous uprisings. As a former intelligence operative whose entire professional career had involved running “black operations”, Putin was particularly inclined to see the CIA as pulling the strings. The goal, as the Kremlin saw it, was to install pro-western puppet regimes. Russia itself could be next.

The shock of the Iraq war and the colour revolutions were the recent experiences that informed Putin’s Munich speech in 2007. And, as the Kremlin saw it, this pattern of western misdeeds continued. Putin points to the western powers’ 2011 intervention in Libya that resulted in the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi – something he believes they had promised they would not do.

The overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi is a particularly sore point for Putin

That episode is a particularly sore spot for Putin, since it took place during the four years from 2008 to 2012 when he was serving in the lesser job of prime minister, having stepped aside as president in favour of his acolyte Dmitry Medvedev. As Putin’s supporters see it, a naive Medvedev was duped into supporting a UN resolution that allowed for a limited intervention, only for western powers to exceed their mandate in order to overthrow and kill Gaddafi. They have no time for the response that the Libyan intervention was made on human rights grounds, but that events then took on a life of their own, as the Libyan rebellion gained steam.

Medvedev’s alleged naivety in allowing the Libyan intervention proved useful for Putin, however: it established the idea that he was indispensable as Russia’s leader. Any substitute, even one chosen by Putin, would leave the country vulnerable to a scheming and ruthless west. In 2011, Putin announced that he intended to return as president, after the potential presidential term had been extended to two consecutive periods of six years. This announcement provoked rare public demonstrations in Moscow and other cities, which again fanned Putin’s fears about western schemes to undermine his power. I was in Moscow in January 2012 and witnessed the marches and banners, some of which carried pointed references to Gaddafi’s fate. Putin understood the parallels. He commented publicly about how disgusted he had been by the footage of Gaddafi’s murder – which perhaps reflected a certain concern about his own potential fate. The fact that Hillary Clinton, then America’s Secretary of State, expressed public support for the 2012 demonstrations was deeply resented by Putin and may have justified, in his mind, Russia’s efforts to undermine Clinton’s presidential campaign in 2016.

Putin secured his re-election, but his sense that the west remained a threat to Russia was further stoked by events in Ukraine in 2013-14. The prospect of that country signing an association agreement with the European Union was seen as a serious threat in the Kremlin, since it would pull Russia’s most important neighbour – once an integral part of the USSR – into the west’s sphere of influence. Under pressure from Moscow, the Ukrainian government of President Viktor Yanukovych reversed course. But this provoked another popular uprising in Kyiv, forcing Yanukovych to flee. The loss of a compliant ally in Kyiv was a major geopolitical reverse for the Kremlin.

Putin’s response was to dramatically raise the stakes, by crossing the line into the use of military force. In February 2014, Russia invaded and annexed Crimea, a region that was part of Ukraine but had belonged to Russia until 1954 and was populated largely by Russian-speakers. It was also, by agreement with the Ukrainians, the home of Russia’s Black Sea fleet. In the west, the annexation of Crimea, along with Russian military intervention in eastern Ukraine, was seen as a flagrant violation of international law that many feared could be the prelude to further acts of aggression.

But in Russia, the annexation was widely greeted as a triumph – it represented the nation’s fightback. Putin’s approval ratings in independent opinion polls soared to over 80%. In the immediate afterglow, he came closer to achieving the ultimate goal of the strongman ruler: the complete identification of the nation with the leader. Vyacheslav Volodin, the speaker of the Russian parliament, exulted: “If there’s Putin, there’s Russia. If there’s no Putin, there’s no Russia.” Putin himself crowed that Crimea had been taken without a shot being fired.

The west’s response was to slap economic sanctions on Russia. But western indignation did not last long. Four years later, Russia hosted a successful World Cup. At the final, Putin sat with the presidents of France and Croatia, two EU nations, in the VIP box in Moscow.

The ease with which Putin annexed Crimea – and the swiftness with which the west seemed prepared to forgive – may have laid the ground for an unjustified confidence that led to the invasion of Ukraine. His overreach is also a reminder of the flaws in the strongman model of leadership. Decades in office can cause a leader to succumb to megalomania or paranoia. The elimination of checks and balances, the centralisation of power and the promotion of a cult of personality make it more likely that a leader will make a disastrous mistake. For all these reasons, strongman rule is an inherently flawed and dangerous model of government.

Tragically, that lesson is being learned all over again – in Russia and Ukraine. An invasion that was meant to secure Russia’s place as a great power and Putin’s place in history has clearly gone wrong. Putin is now involved in a brutal war of attrition. Western sanctions will see the Russian economy shrink dramatically this year, and the Russian middle-class is witnessing the disappearance of many of the consumer goods and travel opportunities that emerged with the end of the cold war.

The unofficial goal of western policy is clearly to force Putin from power. But the endgame may not come as swiftly as we would like. Deeply entrenched in his decades-long mission, Putin is now even less likely to give up power voluntarily, since his successors might repudiate his policies, or even put him on trial.

The prospects for popular uprising are equally poor, despite the many brave Russians who have indicated their disgust over the war. Any protests are likely to be swiftly crushed with violence and imprisonment, as they were in neighbouring Belarus in 2020 and 2021. A third scenario – the possibility of an enlightened group within the elite seizing power – seems out of reach, too. Organising a palace coup against Putin will be very difficult: all dissenters were purged from the Kremlin long ago. Putin also takes his personal security very seriously: several of his former bodyguards have become rich in their own right. While there will be many within Russia who are dismayed by the course that events have taken, orchestrating that diffuse discontent into a coherent plot looks like a formidable challenge.

The difficult truth is that Putin’s strongman style has defined his rule over Russia – and despite his many crimes and misdemeanours, those same strongman tactics may preserve him in power for years to come.

Tensions between Russian President Vladimir Putin and European leaders have reached a critical flashpoint following recent statements from the Kremlin accusing European officials of “openly declaring war against Russia”. During a Military-Industrial Commission meeting on September 18, 2026, Putin asserted that external security threats against Russia continue to mount, pointing to NATO expansion and increased defense spending across the continent.

This diplomatic freeze is driven by a series of aggressive political narratives, hybrid security threats, and shifting red lines.

1. Putin’s Accusations Against European Leadership

During his mid-September address, Vladimir Putin directly targeted European heads of state, claiming that their warnings of a potential future conflict with Russia are political fabrications.

• The “Domestic Diversion” Claim: Putin argued that European leaders are escalating rhetoric and preparing for war to conceal failures in their own domestic economic and social policies, distract from declining living standards, and revive sagging electoral ratings.
• Denying Aggressive Intentions: Even as he leveled these charges, Putin claimed that Moscow harbors “no aggressive intentions toward Europe” and remains open to re-establishing bilateral dialogue and restoring diplomatic ties with its neighbors.

2. The European Reality: Hybrid Threats and Security Upgrades

European officials reject Putin’s narrative, emphasizing that their actions are entirely defensive responses to real-world Russian aggression. Recent escalations have pushed several nations to significantly upgrade their public readiness and infrastructure protection:

• Escalating Hybrid Warfare: French President Emmanuel Macron recently convened political leaders for emergency meetings, warning that the “Russian hybrid threat facing Europeans and France has intensified”. Analysts have blamed Moscow for an influx of non-military hybrid attacks targeting border posts, shopping centers, and critical infrastructure across Europe.
• Active Sabotage Operations: In northern Europe, Finnish President Alexander Stubb urged citizens to mentally prepare for asymmetric threats, including Russian drone incidents and potential infrastructure sabotage.
• Civilian and Military Mobilization: In direct response to Russian air attacks near its borders, Germany has begun preparing hospitals for potential conflict contingencies, while Lithuania has updated its national evacuation plans. Simultaneously, NATO forces have conducted large-scale exercises in the Baltic region to reinforce deterrence.

3. The Troop Deployment Red Line

The geopolitical stand-off is heavily exacerbated by discussions within Europe regarding potential long-term security guarantees and peacekeeping arrangements for Ukraine. In response to these discussions, the Kremlin has drawn a hard line:

• Putin has explicitly warned that the deployment of any European military forces inside Ukraine would be classified by Moscow as direct involvement in the war, which could instantly trigger a direct Russia-Europe military confrontation.
• Concurrently, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov added that the consequences of a direct conflict between Russia and European states would be “extremely serious”.

With the Kremlin publicly stating there is “no prospect” of improved relations due to Europe’s confrontational political generation, both sides remain locked in a highly volatile cycle of military readiness updates, hybrid encounters, and aggressive deterrence rhetoric.

Huge fires burned through Moscow overnight following one of the biggest Ukrainian drone attacks in the Russian capital, which left two people dead. 

Ukraine and Russia have continued attacks on each other’s energy infrastructure despite ​an announcement by US President Donald Trump on Monday that they had agreed ⁠to stop.

Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said on his Telegram channel that the biggest ​Ukrainian drone attacks had been thwarted, with Russia downing more than 1,600 drones since ​Saturday, including 450 headed for Moscow. 

Several drones reached the premises of the Moscow oil refinery, and one hit an apartment, Sobyanin said.

The latest attack from Ukraine comes as Russia entered its third and final day of a parliamentary election that President Vladimir Putin has cast as a test of support for Russia’s war in Ukraine. 

‘The unprecedented attack ​was clearly planned with the aim of disrupting the elections,’ Sobyanin said. ‘The adversary ​failed to achieve this.’

A major warehouse in a logistics hub in the nearby town of Sofyino was also struck, killing a woman and injuring five others – including two children. 

Elsewhere in the Orekhovo-Zuevsky district, an elderly man was killed by a downed drone. 

Images showed how thick black smoke blanketed part of the city as it billowed from the site of the Moscow refinery.

The scale of any damage to the facility was not immediately known, while all four of Moscow’s main airports faced major disruption as the capital’s airspace was closed. 

Ukrainian strikes have knocked out a significant part of Russia’s oil refining capacity, triggering oil product shortages, fuel price increases and long queues at filling ​stations in many regions ​across the country’s ⁠11 time zones. 

The Moscow plant, which has been targeted multiple times, processed 11.6 million metric tons of oil in 2024, producing ​2.9 million tons of gasoline and 3.2 million tons of ​diesel, the ⁠latest available data shows.

Ukraine has not commented on the attacks. Both sides say they do not target civilians.

In the wider Moscow region, in addition to the two deaths, ⁠400 ​people, including 70 children, were evacuated from a 21-storey ​apartment block in the Ramenskoye district, and many homes were damaged, said Governor Andrei Vorobyov. 

Russians began three days of voting on Friday in the country’s first wartime parliamentary election. 

The State Duma vote is expected to see the ruling United ​Russia party easily retain its dominance in a political system critics say does not tolerate dissent. 

The Kremlin is likely to present the outcome as evidence of public backing for Putin’s ​policies and for the war, Europe’s deadliest conflict since World War Two, now in its fifth year with no sign of ending soon.

Most anti-war candidates were barred from the ballot. 

Those who did run from the liberal Yabloko party, which has polled in the single digits in recent years but hoped to tap into war fatigue, said they feared for their freedom after courts handed long jail terms to two senior party ​figures before the vote for comments about the conflict deemed illegal by authorities.

Discrediting the army or spreading what authorities regard as fake news are punishable by lengthy prison sentences.

In a ​small act of defiance, Yabloko’s leader, Nikolai Rybakov, demonstratively spoiled his ballot paper, writing his party’s name and the slogan ‘For peace’.

The Kremlin says national unity and some censorship are necessary during what it calls ‌its special military ⁠operation in Ukraine. 

It casts the conflict as part of an existential struggle with a hostile West and says Ukrainian intelligence services and other enemies are stepping up efforts to stir unrest inside Russia.

Russian electoral officials said on Saturday that an online voting system in Moscow had come under cyberattack. 

Kyiv, which has suspended elections under martial law, has dismissed the Russian vote as a ‘pseudo election’.

Putin on Friday also accused Ukraine of trying to interfere in the election, citing what he said was a Ukrainian strike on the home of an election ​official in the Russian-controlled part of Ukraine’s ​Zaporizhzhia region that killed Elena Astanina, the ⁠official. 

Despite what experts see as the election’s predictable outcome, the NEST think-tank in Berlin, co-founded by Kremlin critic Mikhail Khodorkovsky, whom Russian authorities have designated ‘a foreign agent’, said the vote could ​still produce awkward moments for the Kremlin at a time of economic strain.

‘The consequences of the war are increasingly being felt within the ​country, and accumulated anxiety and ⁠frustration may translate into votes for the systemic opposition parties that the Kremlin has allowed to remain on the ballot,’ it said in a note.

It said the Communist Party and the New People Party could attract votes the authorities would prefer to go to United Russia. Both parties have consistently voted in line with United Russia on major issues.

Putin told the nation in a televised address before ⁠the election ​that the vote would underline support for Russian troops fighting in Ukraine.

‘Your choice, and your will, will once ​again demonstrate that millions of people stand behind our soldiers, that we are a united people bound together by shared values, historical memory, and love for our homeland, and that no one will succeed in dividing or intimidating us,’ ​said Putin.

Initial results are expected to start emerging at around 1800 GMT on Sunday, with more complete results available on Monday.

Roman Dobrokhotov had been content enough for his appearance at a conference in Washington DC this week to be publicised, although it was not something he would normally risk in Europe. The dissident Russian journalist was named during a trial in London last year as one of the targets of a Russian spy ring that appeared to have murderous intent.

“Maybe burn him alive on the street, spray him with some super-strong acid, VX, like the North Koreans, or the ricin,” a Russian-hired operative had texted of the plans for Dobrokhotov in Britain.

American soil, though, has traditionally been regarded as something of a safe place for those speaking out against the Kremlin, whether it has been under the red flag of the Soviet Union or the tricolour of Vladimir Putin’s Russian Federation. It might be possible for Kremlin agents to get away with deploying poison-tipped umbrellas on people crossing London’s Waterloo Bridge, as was the fate of the Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov in 1978, but risking such colourful assassinations on the Brooklyn Bridge or indeed anywhere on US territory would be a different matter entirely.

An umbrella similar to the one the KGB used to kill dissident Georgi Markov at the International Spy Museum in Washington DC. Photograph: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images

If not part of the so-called Moscow rules, the fabled operating guidelines for western and Russian spies, then there was certainly an adjunct, a gentleman’s agreement of sorts, that neither side would kill on each other’s soil. That had been the understanding of many of the other dissidents as they prepared to appear at the Washington Dialogue conference on Russian affairs being held in the high-rise office of the National Endowment for Democracy, a short walk from the White House.

This week the kaleidoscope was shaken. “It looks like starting from today, the rules have changed in America,” Dobrokhotov, 43, said. “We will have to change how we behave there. Nowhere is safe.”

The game changer overshadowing the Washington conference was an announcement on Tuesday that the US Department of Justice was unsealing indictments in absentia against five individuals allegedly working for Russia’s intelligence services who were said to have conspired to “conduct attacks and murders around the world, including in the United States”.

The most eye-catching claim was that of an audacious plot to recruit unnamed US residents to “eliminate” a prominent Russian dissident living in the US capital. Those named as part of the spy network were a serving officer of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), Kirill Khrameev, 27, and his father, Yuri Khrameev, 63, who is a former FSB colonel, along with two 35-year-old Cubans, Oemis Romagoza Durruthy and Yaidel Delgado Suarez, nicknamed “the Viking”, and a 22-year-old Venezuelan, Angel Eduardo Castro.

Col Yuri Khrameev of the FSB, accused (alongside his son Kirill) of plotting to kill Russian dissidents in the US. Photograph: Twitter X

Oemis Romagoza Durruthy, a Cuban expat dance instructor was allegedly hired by the FSB to find and kill Russian dissidents in the US. Photograph: VK

The FBI had uncovered encrypted messages – written in Spanish and ineptly shrouded in spy code – commissioning what one of the alleged ring members had described as “gravely serious work”: an offer of $40,000 (£30,000) to surveil and then kill someone in Washington that the Russian state wanted to “disappear”.

There was talk of bringing in assassins from Mexico to carry out the “construction” (the word used by the agents for murder) but they were “delayed” and so a local killer was sought, according to the indictment. The identity of the purported victim was not revealed by the authorities, but among the rumoured potential targets was Vladimir Kara-Murza, who was freed from jail in Siberia and went to the US as part of a swap for Russian intelligence operatives in 2024. He declined to comment on the case when approached by the Guardian.

Political activist and former prisoner in Russia Vladimir Kara-Murza in London after the 2024 Ankara prisoner exchange. Photograph: Sophia Evans/The Observer

The almost unprecedented nature of the plot on US soil was unintentionally highlighted in the indictment itself, which listed a series of assassinations carried out by the Russian intelligence services. There was Paul Klebnikov, an American journalist and historian, murdered in Moscow in 2004. Two years later, Alexander Litvinenko, a former FSB officer, was killed in London by two Russian agents who put radioactive material in his tea. In 2018, Sergei Skripal, a former Russian military intelligence officer, and his daughter, survived after being poisoned with a military-grade nerve agent in Salisbury in the UK; a local woman, Dawn Sturgess, died after being contaminated. In 2019, a court in Germany found that Zelimkhan Khangoshvili, a former commander in the second Chechen war, was assassinated in Berlin, on the order of the Russian state. And in 2024 Alexei Navalny, the Russian opposition leader, died while in custody after being previously poisoned with the nerve agent Novichok while outside the country.

“More recently, countries throughout Europe have accused Russia of sabotage operations and extrajudicial targeting,” the indictment goes on. “For example, in or about September 2026, a German investigation reportedly linked the GRU’s military intelligence services to a drone attack at the Leipzig/Halle airport in Germany.”

German police said explosives experts examined a drone near a runway at Leipzig/Halle airport in Schkeuditz, Germany in August. Photograph: Axel Schmidt/Reuters

But no such activities on US soil were raised in the paperwork, and for historically rooted reasons.

“I would describe it as an unwritten set of cold-war rules of the road,” said Chris Costa, a former US intelligence chief who is today executive director of the International Spy Museum in Washington DC. “The US and Soviet Union conducted aggressive espionage against one another, but there were understood limits, particularly around physically targeting each other’s intelligence personnel and families … If these allegations are proved, directing surveillance and murder on US soil crosses a very different line from traditional espionage.”

A spy swap at Berlin’s Glienicke Bridge AKA the ‘Bridge of Spies’ during the cold war. Photograph: Ullstein Bild/Getty Images

Why would the Russians cross this red line? Jack Devine, a former associate director of operations at the CIA, said that the Kremlin had perhaps become blase about the potential repercussions – but that it could prove to be a misstep.

“The Russians today put far less weight on political criticism internationally, and are less concerned about the ramifications, including sanctions,” he said. “Putin has a vision of himself in Russia and in the world as a powerful leader of the old school which he has often reminisced about in his interviews and public statements. I believe it’s wrongfooted, and he may be underestimating the long-term internal and external ramifications of this isolation.”

For Calder Walton, author and assistant director of the Belfer Center’s Intelligence Project at Harvard University, it is not just the Russian motivations that should be analysed. In 2023, Walton revealed in his book Spies that three years earlier a Russian assassination squad had targeted Aleksandr Poteyev, a defector who had been living in the US.

“In the Poteyev episode, American authorities apparently chose secrecy, presumably to protect intelligence sources and methods and avoid a public confrontation with Moscow,” he said. “By unsealing this indictment, the justice department is doing something different: exposing the alleged network, warning potential recruits, reassuring threatened dissidents and imposing costs on individuals who might otherwise have continued to operate in the shadows. Public attribution is itself a counterintelligence weapon.”

European diplomats in Washington tasked with monitoring the conflict in Ukraine and US-Russian relations also said the exposure of the plot by the FBI indicated a shift in Washington’s position. “It’s a big deal that the US chose to reveal this now,” one said. “The decision to do that raises the profile and shows the clear and imminent threat to dissidents in the US.”

Walton added: “The immediate policy consequences may be limited because all five defendants are reportedly abroad and remain at large.

“We should nevertheless expect greater protection for Russian dissidents and defectors, intensified investigation of Russian proxy networks, closer intelligence cooperation with European allies, and potentially further sanctions, expulsions or criminal charges.”

Evidence of a heightened state of alert to the risk to dissidents in the US has already emerged. Anastasia Shevchenko, a vocal critic of Putin who fled Russia for Lithuania in 2022 after becoming the first person found guilty of breaking a new law of participating in an “undesirable organisation”, said she had been warned at a recent interview for a visa to the US that she could not assume that she would be safe during her visit.

Russian journalist and activist Anastasia Shevchenko at a conference of the Russian Antiwar Committee in Strasbourg in May. Photograph: SOPA Images/LightRocket/Getty Images

Nikkie Lyubarsky, a research associate at the Soufan Center, an NGO in New York specialising in global security, said the unsealing of the indictment could reflect a “behind the scenes” escalation in tension between the White House and the Kremlin as a result of Russia’s reported support for Iran in the continuing conflict with the US and Israel.

“The US publicising [the indictments] now definitely raises some flags in my mind,” said Lyubarsky. “It coincides obviously with the sanctions that have just been passed in the House and the CIA director’s visit to Russia recently. There’s probably some sort of escalation behind the scenes that we’re not aware of. It could be tied to Russian intelligence-sharing with Iran. That would be my best guess.”

Back at the Washington Dialogue conference, the perhaps understandably conspiratorial-minded dissidents chewing on sandwiches at the lunch break had their own theories. Was Donald Trump seeking to distance himself from the news that the wedding of his son, Donald Trump Jr, had been partly paid for by the Putin loyalist and oligarch Umar Kremlev?

Natalia Arno, the founder and president of the Free Russia Foundation, who experienced symptoms from a suspected poisoning during a 2023 trip to Prague that she believes was commissioned by the Kremlin, said that for all the theorising, one thing had changed undeniably. “We thought the Kremlin wouldn’t be as brazen as to do something on United States soil,” she said. “It’s a different landscape.”

Russians on Friday began three days of voting in the country’s first wartime parliamentary election, which features virtually no opposition and is all but certain to secure the Kremlin’s political dominance.

Authorities spread the election over the weekend, ending Sunday, in a bid to boost turnout among the 111 million eligible voters, and they even allowed electronic balloting.

The Kremlin wants the parliamentary election — the first since the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 — to underline public support for the war and give a veneer of legitimacy to its action. It has sought to avoid any political risks by stamping out even the slightest sign of dissent.

“Your choice and resolve will once again demonstrate that millions of people stand behind our fighters, that we are a united people, bound by shared values, historical memory, and love for the Motherland,” President Vladimir Putin told the nation before the vote.

Russian state news agencies reported that Putin voted online Friday and released a video of him in front of a computer screen.

The main Kremlin party, United Russia, is all but assured to retain its overwhelming control of the lower house, the State Duma. Several smaller parties of the “systemic opposition” that vote in sync with the government on all key issues also are expected to retain their presence.

Voters cast two separate ballots, filling half of the Duma’s 450 seats by selecting political parties listed on the ballot. The rest are contested in single-seat constituencies, with voters choosing individual candidates.

Some Russians hope for a different future

Russians interviewed by The Associated Press expressed different expectations from the election.

Dmitry Kirillin in Moscow said earlier this week that he would like “to see some changes. To see a different party” at the helm. But Muscovite Alexander Vertukhin believed “what United Russia and the communists are doing is quite sufficient; their platforms cover everything.”

Speaking at a Moscow polling station Friday, pensioner Galina Vavilova said she thought ending the war in Ukraine “is the main thing, of course.”

“That is the most important thing right now. Everyone wants peace, that’s what it comes down to. So that our guys are safe and sound,” she said.

Another pensioner, Lyudmila Kalinina, wished for life “to stabilize for the better” and for “an end to the big divide between the ultra-rich and the extremely poor, because, after all, many people don’t live a very sweet life.”

Vladimir Chubarev, a 72-year-old professor, expressed hope “for all the important initiatives our government is undertaking to succeed,” adding: “And, of course, for victory.”

Russia has silenced anti-war voices

The liberal Yabloko party, the only registered political entity that dared to criticize the war, was removed from the ballot last month by Russia’s Supreme Court, and only has a few dozen candidates in the single-constituency races. Additionally, some anti-war politicians have been imprisoned or forced to flee abroad ahead of the campaign.

The election follows a summer of Ukraine’s long-range drone strikes on oil refineries that triggered a widespread fuel crisis. Warehouses belonging to online retailers Wildberries and Ozon also were attacked. The damage has exacerbated problems for the Russian economy and brought the war home for millions.

In Russia’s Black Sea resort of Sochi, polling stations were briefly closed because of a threat of a drone attack, local officials said. One polling station in the Krasnodar region had to be set up in a different venue after a drone shattered windows there, said Central Election Commission head Ella Pamfilova.

For the first time, the parliamentary election includes residents of four Ukrainian regions that Moscow illegally annexed after the war began, but still doesn’t fully control. Voting also is taking place in Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula that was illegally annexed by Russia in 2014.

Voters dropped their ballots in a box at one polling station in the Russian-held part of the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine as an armed Russian soldier stood nearby and watched.

In the Russian-held Luhansk region, 14 polling stations were using backup power sources after Ukrainian drones damaged electrical lines, Pamfilova said.

Separately, Russian officials said Ukrainian attacks earlier this week killed a polling station chief and wounded another in the Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia region. There was no immediate comment from Ukraine on the accusation.

Authorities in Kyiv denounced the voting in the Russian-held areas as illegal and urged foreign governments and international organizations not to recognize the election, warning Ukrainians that taking part in organizing the balloting could carry criminal liability.

European Commission spokesperson Christian Wigand also called the voting in Russian-held regions “illegal” and said the European Union condemns it.

“These so-called elections represent yet another blatant violation of international law. The European Union does not, and will never recognize either the holding of these, so-called elections, sham elections, in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine or their results,” he said.

Wigand said the way the elections are held “underscores the continued and deepening erosion of democracy in Russia,” and that the Kremlin “deprives voters in Russia of a genuine choice about the future of their country.”

He also noted that Russia decided not to invite observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, disregarding its commitments. He vowed the EU will continue to support Russian civil society organizations, human rights groups and independent media.

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Lorne Cook in Brussels contributed.