Russian hybrid warfare: A framework
Authors: Fox Amos C. 
Published: May 2021

As Montenegro sough to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 2015, an attempted coup erupted within the country in October of that year. The Telegraph's Ben Farmer reported that, ‘An officer with Russia's GRU military intelligence service, is accused of running a web of Serbian and Russian nationalists and paramilitaries who plotted to assassinate the Montenegrin prime minister.’

Farmer, B. (2017, February 26). Montenegro to Indict Russian Spy Behind Coup Plot. The Telegraph. Available at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/02/26/montenegro-indict-russian-spy-behind-coup-plot/. [accessed 5 March, 2017].

The failed coup and attempted assassination were conducted by Russian intelligence in support of Russian President Vladimir Putin's vision for a modern Eurasia in which NATO discontinues encroaching on Russia's sphere of influence and in which Russia ascends to regional hegemony.

Knezevic, G. (2017, January 2). Montenegro's NATO-Russia Chess Match. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. Available at: http://www.rferl.org/a/montenegro-nato-russia-chess-match/28210094.html. [accessed 5 March, 2017].

Although unsuccessful, this covert operation—conducted by Russian intelligence working in conjunction with disaffected Russian partisans within Montenegro—to stymie NATO's expansion captures the essence of modern Russian hybrid warfare. Nevertheless, Montenegro is not unique, but instead is one of many recent hybrid conflicts propagated by the Russian government. Speaking on the spectre of Russian operations in Eastern Europe, American general Michael Williamson commented, ‘In terms of state-based challenges, Russia's purported annexation of Crimea and invasion of Ukraine demonstrated a sophisticated combination of diplomatic, informational, military, and economic means to achieve objectives below a threshold that the Russian leadership believe would elicit a concerted NATO response.’

Lt. Gen. Michael Williamson, Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster, Lt. Gen. Joseph Anderson, and Lt. Gen. John Murray, statement to the Subcommittee on AirLand, Committee on Armed Services, United States Senate, on Army Modernization in Review of the Defense Authorization Request for Fiscal Year 2017, Second Session, 114th Congress, 5 April 2016.

Since 2008, Russia's operations throughout Europe, its Near Abroad and Syria signal an evolved approach to the conduct of war. Many terms and phrases have been attributed to Russia's evolved model of war to include Grey Zone conflict and new generation warfare. However, hybrid war or hybrid warfare is quite useful, despite the contention the term generates. The term hybrid warfare is useful because it speaks of the bundling of capabilities, technology and ideas in a coherent, purposeful manner to accomplish tactical, operational and strategic objectives on behalf of policymakers and strategists.

The work starting position is that the Russian hybrid warfare is in fact an applied way of war. Despite many arguments to the contrary, Russia's applied way of war introduces important nuances to the conduct of war. Resultantly, the purpose of this work is to clarify the concept of Russian hybrid warfare and to identify the characteristics that make it worthy of examination.

Two basic methods exist to explain an observable way of war. The first is to paraphrase existing primary source information on the subject. This method requires access to primary source information and the physical ability to read that material. That method is not employed in this work because access to Russian strategic and tactical doctrine is not readily available to the layperson. Furthermore, in many cases doctrine is a preferred way of war-fighting, a narrative and tied to procurement strategies, and thus, not an applied method. Therefore, merely relying on doctrine or policy statements can mislead the researcher about the true character of a given way of war.

That notwithstanding, the second method is to observe the phenomenon in multiple situations over a period of time. In doing so, the observer seeks to identify trends, inconsistencies, rules, relationships, reactions and boundaries that surface and recur therein and then generate an over-arching assessment about that phenomenon's boundaries and inner workings. That is the technique employed here.