• DOI:10.1080/09592318.2015.1129170
• Corpus ID: 147471024

Hybrid, ambiguous, and non-linear? How new is Russia’s ‘new way of war’?

@article{Galeotti2016HybridAA,
  title={Hybrid, ambiguous, and non-linear? How new is Russia’s ‘new way of war’?},
  author={Mark Galeotti},
  journal={Small Wars \& Insurgencies},
  year={2016},
  volume={27},
  pages={282 - 301}
}

• M. Galeotti
• Published 3 March 2016
• Political Science
• Small Wars & Insurgencies

Abstract Russia’s recent operations in Ukraine, especially the integrated use of militias, gangsters, information operations, intelligence, and special forces, have created a concern in the West about a ‘new way of war’, sometimes described as ‘hybrid’. However, not only are many of the tactics used familiar from Western operations, they also have their roots in Soviet and pre-Soviet Russian practice. They are distinctive in terms of the degree to which they are willing to give primacy to ‘non-kinetic’ means, the scale of integration of non-state actors, and tight linkage between political and military command structures. However, this is all largely a question of degree rather than true qualitative novelty. Instead, what is new is the contemporary political, military, technological, and social context in which new wars are being fought.