Hybrid Warfare: What it means, how it works, and what to expect

“There hybrid warfare of Russia with hostile countries it will last a long time”: the threat of Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for the Kremlin, has rekindled the spotlight on a type of conflict that has long been the focus of expert attention international security and chancelleries around the world

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The so-called ‘hybrid warfare‘ is a relatively new concept and, as recalled by a paper published on the NATO website, there is no single definition of what it is. In general it is a kind of conflict that comes fought not only with conventional weaponsbut also through other methods

Kremlin: “The hybrid war with the West will last a long time”

Among these are the hacker attacksthe organized disinformation online and the so-called ‘false flag operations‘, or operations of various kinds – from military attacks proper to a vast range of hostile actions – conducted with the intention of disguising the real perpetrator and placing the blame on other actors

War in Ukraine, one year later

Sometimes “hybrid warfare” actions are conducted without resorting to any kind of direct military attack. Their purpose is in fact not only to cause damage to the target of the attacks, but also to make it as difficult as possible to identify the perpetrators and consequently those responsible

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Defending against ‘hybrid warfare’ requires different skills and actions than those needed to defend against a traditional military conflict. For this reason the Atlantic Alliance and the European Union opened the European Center of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats in Finland, the European Center of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats

Among the actions of the “hybrid warfare”, cited by a insight from the BBC on the Center in Helsinki, the election interference: the example cited is that of US presidential election 2016when according to investigators there would have been meddling organized by Russia to direct voters towards Donald Trump

The insight of the BBC

To conduct these interferences, so-called ‘bots’ are often used: fake accounts on social media controlled by payrolled cyber activists of foreign agencies or powers, whose purpose is flooding the online debate with false or manipulated information to guide voter preferences

This type of business is closely related to disinformation onlinewhich represents another typical act of ‘hybrid wars’: flood social networks with fake newsfalse narratives or conspiracy theories can have a dramatic impact on targeted companies without the need to fire a single shot

Furthermore, even the hacker attacks they can be used to strike a country in the context of a ‘hybrid war’: a classic example are the blows against public bodiesto paralyze or simply make the functioning of institutions more unstable and thus diminish their credibility in the eyes of citizens

This kind of attacks, which in themselves produce serious economic and social damage, also have the medium/long-term objective ofi to destabilize the political stability of the target countries from within. Again, the purpose is achieved by making difficult to identify the source of the threat

Finally in the context of ‘hybrid warfare’ can take place even military attacksi, whose authors, however, remain hidden. An example is the destruction of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipelinewhose explosion had profound repercussions both on gas supplies by European Union countries and on relations between Russia and the EU

To date, however, the attack has not only not been claimed by any State but it has not even been achieved know for sure who its author was. And the uncertainty about the causes of what happened feeds the international tension which is intrinsically linked to ‘hybrid warfare’

As mentioned, meanwhile, the Kremlin spokesman announced that “this hybrid warfare which they have unleashed against our country it will last for a long time”. And NATO has warned about possible future actions of Putin: According to Deputy Secretary Mircea Geoană, there are currently no threats to Moldova’s military security, “but this does not mean that Russia does not use the arsenal of a hybrid war”

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