The Russian Origin of hybrid warfare as a tool to promote the Anti-Russian Agenda in Western Society

Ilyichev Anton Vladimirovich Junior researcher, Museum of the Heroic Defense and Liberation of Sevastopol 299020, Russia, Sevastopol, General Ostryakov Ave., 250-V, sq. 11 ilichev-toni@mail.ru Other publications by this author

            Introduction.

Hybrid war is one of the main terms used by political and military experts to characterize the current configuration of military–political confrontation in the international arena. The definition and disclosure of this phenomenon is fraught with enormous difficulties, because of which the scientific community has not been able to form a unified view on the issue of its regulation. The history of the origin of the term also raises questions. In Western political thought, it is considered that it was first introduced by F. Hoffman, a military analyst of the US Armed Forces. In 2005, he co-authored with J. Mattis, a retired US general, the article "The Heyday of hybrid wars" ^[45], and a year later an independent study "A complex of irregular methods of warfare" ^[30]. F. Hoffman's views are based on the concept of hybrid warfare as a combination of methods of regular and irregular warfare. The existence of these ideal types of warfare has been in question for many years. Scientists W. Murray and P. Mansoor in the study "Hybrid Warfare: Fighting Complex Opponents from the Ancient World to the Present" rightly noted that the combination of irregular and regular methods was already actively present not only in the Cold War, but also in previous world wars ^[46]. American analysts were not the first to introduce the term hybrid warfare to the general public. In 1999, representatives of the PLA Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui published the work "Unlimited War". In it, the authors note that the world has entered a new era, where political, economic and technological tools are becoming weapons of modern warfare ^[40].

The purpose of the study is to study the Western scientific discourse that hybrid warfare is the development of Russian military thought as one of the mechanisms to promote the anti-Russian agenda. The subject of the study is the publications of Western researchers on the topics of information and hybrid warfare from 2014 to 2022. The object of the study is a Russophobic narrative created around the phenomenon of hybrid warfare by Western political and military experts. The Russophobic narrative means a constructed sequence of images and ideas of an anti-Russian orientation, clothed in the form of a scientific narrative. Due to the huge array of publications for the period from 2014 to 2022, the work analyzed studies reflecting the main specifics of the views of Western authors on the subject under consideration.

The objectives of the study are as follows:

1) To consider the problem of regulation of hybrid wars on the example of the functioning of international humanitarian law in the conflicts of the XXI century;

2)      Determining the origins in the formation of ideas in Western scientific discourse that hybrid warfare is a development of Russian military thought;

3)      To study the main provisions and components of the "Russian hybrid war";

4)      To give counter-theses on the accusations of Russia made by foreign authors in conducting hybrid military operations and committing war crimes, using the example of the NATO and US campaigns.

The research methodology is based on systemic, geopolitical and civilizational approaches.

The main part.

            In modern international law, there are no legal norms that allow regulating all elements of hybrid warfare. Expert on military security problems R. Arzumanyan and NKR Colonel A. Baghdasaryan believe that the way out of this situation is the development of "military law", a certain field that will allow regulating the tools of military means and methods of its application ^[1]. Such actions are unlikely to solve the problems that have arisen for a number of reasons. First of all, because of the disinterest of the elites of the world and regional powers. The creation of military law, as experts present it, will deprive the state of a whole range of techniques and tools necessary for conducting an active domestic and foreign policy. The tense global situation, in the conditions of a new round of the cold war, also does not contribute to the development of a general consensus on this issue. However, the very fact of the creation of military law does not mean the elimination of hybrid wars as a phenomenon. The current legislative norms of international law on the principles of conducting regular wars ("International Humanitarian Law") can serve as an illustration of this. The actions of the parties to any military conflict are limited to: the St. Petersburg Declaration of 1868, the Geneva and Hague Conventions, the Biological and Chemical Weapons Conventions, the Convention "On Certain Types of Conventional Weapons" of 1980 and the additional protocol adopted to it in Ottawa in 1997, as well as the Convention on cluster munitions of 30.05.2008. This whole list prohibits:

1.      Deliberately strike at civilian infrastructure facilities, including nuclear power facilities;

2. Use hunger as a military tool;

3.      Use chemical and biological weapons, as well as explosive and cluster munitions;

4.      Killing of prisoners of war and people surrendering;

Let's consider the observance of these norms on the example of one of the military conflicts of our time. On March 24, 1999, NATO launched a military operation against Yugoslavia, codenamed "Allied Force". This was the first military operation of the Alliance, organized without the sanction of the UN Security Council, against the state, which did not directly threaten the members of the Alliance. In the 1990s, the United States actively trained bandit and terrorist groups in Kosovo in order to destabilize the internal situation in the region. Under the control of the American special services, the "Kosovo Liberation Army" was created. In 1998, its militants committed 1,884 terrorist acts, in which 288 people died.

Carpet bombing of the cities of Yugoslavia continued from March 24 to June 10, 1999. The international legal organization "Human Rights Watch" in the report "Civilian Death in the NATO Air Campaign" announced the death of 527 civilians during the bombing of Yugoslavia ^[19]. These data are, of course, significantly underestimated. According to the estimates of the Yugoslav side, between 1,500 and 5,700 civilians were killed during NATO strikes ^[59]. One of the numerous examples of the Alliance's war crimes in Yugoslavia was the attack on the headquarters of the Serbian State Television and Radio (RTS) in the center of Belgrade. As a result, 16 civilians were killed and another 16 were wounded ^{[29, p. 3]}. The relatives of the victims in 2001 appealed to the European Court with a demand to recognize the strike on the RTS station as a war crime. The case was dismissed due to the fact that these actions took place on the territory of a country that did not sign the "European Convention on Human Rights" ^[21].

According to the report of the commission that reviewed the NATO air campaign against Yugoslavia, the RTS building was recognized as a legitimate target, and civilian casualties were recognized as high, but not unacceptable ^[25]. Researchers from Macedonia A. Grizhev and D. Grizhev, referring to the list of military facilities compiled by the International Red Cross from 1956, developed before the Additional Protocols, call the strike on RTS legitimate ^{[29, p. 5]}. At the same time, they note that the Alliance violated article 57 (2) of the Additional Protocols to the Geneva Conventions by not warning civilians about the impending strike. In addition, the Macedonians admitted that the strike did not lead to the solution of the set goals for the destruction of the communications network of the Yugoslav army ^{[29, p. 5-6]}. In 2019, NATO Secretary General J. Stoltenberg stated at the International Security Forum in Belgrade that the bombing of Yugoslavia was undertaken to protect the civilian population of Serbia, and modern Serbs should leave these events in the past ^[10].

War crimes, bypassing international law, were also committed by NATO during the military invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. Alliance officials justify the strikes on civilian targets by the discrepancy between the information received and the real state of affairs. Today, the world community and international organizations actively ignore the war crimes that are being committed on the territory of Yemen and Ukraine. Fighters of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) have repeatedly been seen using chemical weapons, killing prisoners of war and striking the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant, but no sanctions from the international community have followed. On March 2, 2023, a group of saboteurs of the Armed Forces of Ukraine committed a terrorist attack on the territory of the Bryansk region, opening fire on civilians and taking local residents hostage. The UN press secretary issued a statement that the UN could not confirm information about Ukraine's attack on the territory of the Bryansk region ^[62].

Thus, we can note that the existence of a whole range of restrictive norms of international humanitarian law does not in any way restrict countries in the ways and methods of warfare. Another problem related to the difficulties of regulating hybrid warfare was highlighted by the domestic researcher K.L. Sazanova. In her article "Hybrid Warfare: an International Legal Dimension", she points out that hybrid warfare has become a journalistic cliche for denoting any actions of states that do not fit into the traditional paradigm of conducting regular wars" ^[8].

Hybrid warfare as a development of Russia. Western elites very quickly realized the value of this journalistic cliche for information and propaganda campaigns. Hybrid warfare, thanks to engaged foreign experts and the media, has turned into a Russian development.

In 2013, the book "Disinformation. The Secret Strategy of Absolute Power", authored by I.M. Pacepa, the former head of the Romanian Securiate. The study is an outright Russophobic lampoon designed to discredit Russia for the Western reader. I.M. Pachepa attributes in his book the appearance of disinformation as a political tool of the Soviet government, and personally to I. V. Stalin. According to his statements, the USSR conducted active disinformation campaigns during the Second World War and during the confrontation with the United States. The main purpose of this study is to interpret the military–political crisis of the XX century as a result of the activities of the USSR. Thus, in the readers' view, the Soviet Union and Russia appear in the image of the "evil empire", which is guilty of numerous catastrophes of the XX - beginning of the XXI century.

A surge of research on the Russian origin of hybrid warfare occurred after the events of 2014, when Crimea and Sevastopol were reunited with Russia. After that, Western researchers paid close attention to the article "The Value of science in Foresight" by the Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation V. Gerasimov, published in February 2013. In June 2014, FOI (Swedish Defense Research Agency) analysts published a whole series of papers and studies on Russia's actions in Ukraine. G. Persson and K.V. Pallin from this agency made the first attempt in the Western scientific field to link the hybrid war with Russia through the relationship of the 2014 event with the ideas expressed by V. Gerasimov in the article of the Military-Industrial Courier (MIC) ^[47]. In the same month, journalist R. Coalson translated V. Gerasimov's publication into English, publishing it on his page on social networks.

The information bomb was the publication on social networks of Professor M. Galeotti, entitled "The Gerasimov Doctrine and the Russian Nonlinear War". Based on R. Coalson's translation, the American researcher interpreted V. Gerasimov's words about the West's transformation of methods of warfare as Russia's proclamation of a new military doctrine, where non-military measures play a key role. The term "Gerasimov Doctrine" was soon used by many researchers, and M. Galeotti's post was quoted even in documents by trained specialists from NATO ^{[13, p. 7]}. In 2018, M. Galeotti apologized in his blog for inventing the Gerasimov doctrine ^[26]. The author's confession was ignored by the Western expert community, as further materials will show.

The direct relationship of the hybrid war with Russia can be traced in the publication of an interview with the former Secretary General of NATO, A.F. Rasmussen, in which he stated:

"Russia is currently waging a hybrid war with the aim of destabilizing the government of Ukraine and establishing control over the eastern territories of the country" ^[39].

Attempts to dispel the myth of the "Gerasimov doctrine" in the West have been made by a number of experts. In 2016, C. Bartles published his analysis of V. Gerasimov's article entitled "Getting Gerasimov Right" ^[16]. In it, he noted that V. Gerasimov's article is not a proclamation by Russia of a new concept of warfare (hybrid). The study is a study of military operations at the present stage, threats of direct and indirect impact and methods of asymmetric response. The review of US military operations by V. Gerasimov, researcher A. Giles in the work "Valery Gerasimov's Doctrine" ^[27], called "Moscow's paranoid views on US methods of warfare" ^{[27, p.8]}. The views of Charles Bartles were supported by another analyst M. Kofman in his articles "Russian hybrid warfare and other dark arts" ^[32] and "Russia's armed forces under Gerasimov, the man without a doctrine" ^[33]. In them, he pointed out that V. Gerasimov did not propose a new military doctrine, but only reflected his views on the tactics of warfare by the West. Although the materials seek to dispel the myth that has arisen around the "Gerasimov Doctrine", their content remains Russophobic, and the assessments sometimes contradict each other. Thus, M. Coffman points out that the Russian military doctrine is based on the use of conventional forces, but at the same time traces the use of hybrid warfare methods in the events of 2014 in Ukraine.

In 2015 The Federal Academy of Military Policy of Germany, published a study by K. Giles, a specialist in security issues related to Russia and its armed forces, entitled "Russia's Hybrid Warfare: A Success in Propaganda" ^[28]. The author claims that Russia has developed an effective tool for "information warfare" against NATO and the EU. This happened, according to K. Giles, due to "a lack of institutional memory about the subversive activities of the Soviet Union among the Western target audience" ^[28]. The second reason lies in the fact that Russia has invested huge funds and forces in adapting its "subversive activities" to the conditions of the Internet age ^[28]. The approbation of the new policy took place, in his opinion, in the Second Chechen War (where Russians are called aggressors by the author), the events of 2008 in Georgia and the Arab Spring ^[28]. The author includes the tools of the Russian information war:

1. Information troops: hackers, journalists, specialists in strategic communications and psychological operations, and linguists;

2. Cyber-operations to interfere in elections and electoral processes;

3. Control of the internal media field and discrediting of "objective" evidence of Western media;

All the tools described above have been used by Western countries since the 1990s to destabilize the situation in the post-Soviet space and the Middle East. K Giles states that the population of Russia is completely isolated from the Western media. The statement looks, at least, doubtful, due to the peculiarities of the Internet as a channel for the dissemination of information. It is generally recognized that even the Chinese "Golden Shield" can be circumvented with the help of third-party software. Complete isolation, in the form in which, the author states, is impossible. K. Giles explains the effectiveness of "Russian propaganda" in the Western information field by the peculiarity of the Western liberal world:

"When Western editors receive a version of events that is broadcast at all levels of the Russian media machine, from the President to the "Kremlin Army of Trolls," they have no choice but to publish it, which gives it weight and authority."^[28]

The topics of Russia's information war and its cyber operations were continued in the following studies "Russian Information Warfare: Implications for Deterrence Theory" ^[12], "Making Sense of Hybrid Warfare" ^[64], "Russian Hybrid War" ^[51], "Hybrid War: High-tech, Information and Cyber Conflicts" ^[22], "Puts Information Warfare in Ukraine" ^[56], "Redefining Hybrid Warfare: Russia's Non-linear War against the West" ^[57], "A Changing Security Paradigm. New Roles for New Actors – The Russian Approach» ^[17], «When Hybrid Warfare Supports Ideology: Russia Today» ^[63], «Social Media—From Social Exchange to Battlefield» ^[18].

In 2015, NATO energy security specialists M. Ryule and Y. Grublauskas published a study "Energy as a tool of hybrid warfare". This work is a typical example of the disclosure by Western experts of the phenomenon they created, the "Russian hybrid war". M. Ryule and Y. Grublyauskas invest in it:

1) The use of regular and irregular formations on the territory of Ukraine;

2)      Support for separatist formations;

3) Cyber attacks;

4)      Conducting a massive propaganda campaign;

5) The use of energy resources as a pressure tool ^{[50, p. 2]};

The main attention of this publication is focused on the last element. NATO experts write that Russia used Ukraine's dependence on energy resources as an instrument of pressure on the Ukrainian government. After the events of 2014, according to the authors, the effectiveness of this tool increased, since with the return of Crimea and Sevastopol to Russia, Moscow was no longer bound by the need to sell energy resources at a reduced cost. The refusal of the Ukrainian government to pay for gas at new, high prices led to the termination of the supply of energy resources to Ukraine. Together with the unstable situation in the Eastern part of the country, where the main share of mines is located, this led to the formation of a crisis situation in the country's energy sector. The use of energy resources as a weapon is also considered by NATO experts as pressure on the EU with a ban on the transfer of gas to Ukraine ^{[50, p. 4]}. The topic of energy resources as a "weapon of Russia" was actively used at the beginning of 2022, especially after the beginning of its ^{[24] [38] [53]}.

By irregular formations, Western experts mainly mean the use of specialized military groups in territories outside Russia. These groups are based on the experience of the USSR during the Cold War, when the Soviet Union sent specialists and volunteers to help pro-socialist movements in the Middle East, Africa, Latin and South America, and Asia. Since the 1990s, given the privatization that has unfolded on the territory of the Russian Federation, these military groups have been passing into the hands of private individuals, creating something similar to the American concept of private military campaigns (PMCs). Andras Rach, a senior researcher at the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP), sees this difference in the use of PMCs, while officially denying their existence on the territory of the country ^[48]. According to foreign experts, Russia uses private military forces of businessmen to strengthen its influence in the territories of Africa and the Middle East. The main vector of the discussion revolves around the Private military campaign "Wagner", which during this period is referred to as "Vagner-group" ^{[48] [49] [52] [61]}. Accusations from the West of using PMCs look weak, since PMCs are an invention of Western military thought. Their active use began during the years of the Cold War, as mercenary groups to confront the USSR and its loyal regimes and movements. Having gained notoriety, the mercenaries were soon transformed into structures engaged in security functions. The United States actively used PMCs during the campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq. And today, many large PMCs are directly incorporated into the US military system.

The concept of "Russian hybrid war" in the period from 2014 to February 24, 2022, Western authors associated with the support of "separatist armed formations ("DNR and LNR") and the conduct of information operations and cyberattacks against the Western world. Information warfare consists both in attempts to interfere in electoral processes through hacker attacks, and in conducting internal and external media campaigns. The first is to create a protective mechanism to reflect destructive material from the outside. By this, Western authors mean "objective information materials of European and American media" and cultural elements associated with the new ethics in the West. In addition, they believe that there is a mass processing of the consciousness of ordinary citizens through television, the Internet, the media, and cinema. Similar processes in an attempt to consolidate the ideas of "Kremlin propaganda" in society are also taking place in the West through "Kremlin Internet bots" in social networks and "Russia-Today" as the mouthpiece of Russian propaganda.

The main purpose of such publications is to form citizens' ideas about Russia as a global threat to world security. The incitement of Russophobia in Western countries is necessary for foreign elites to distract the attention of the population from internal social and economic problems. In addition, hatred of Russia and Russians allows legitimizing their policies in the international arena, and strengthening control in their society.

Accusations against Russia about supporting separatist armed formations from Western experts look duplicitous, given the US policy over the past 30 years. In O. Stone's film "The President", V.V. Putin officially confirmed in an interview that the United States provided support to terrorists in the North Caucasus in the 1990s ^[7]. Even before the outbreak of the First Chechen War, D. Dudaev paid an official visit to the United States ^[3].

The reaction of a number of Western media about tragedies and terrorist attacks in Russia cannot be called anything but anti-humanistic and immoral. The Polish publication Rcecz Pospolitia, after the tragedy in Beslan, urged readers to "understand the motives of the terrorists," and the leadership of our country called for dialogue with the murderers. Polish journalists believe that although there can be no excuses for terrorist attacks, the situation with Chechnya is an exception.

The Swedish edition of Basler Zeitung wrote: "hatred pushed the militants to take hostages in Beslan. They act with ruthless, monstrous methods. But, on the other hand, their demands to withdraw Russian troops from Chechnya are legitimate."

American participation in the events in the North Caucasus in the 1990s and early 2000s was not open-ended as in the case of other conflicts. The United States and Western countries provided financial support to terrorist and bandit formations through Arab charitable organizations, and arms supplies were carried out through the sale of weapons on the black market of weapons in Azerbaijan and Turkey ^{[2] [6] [5]}. Western countries openly expressed support for terrorist groups in the North Caucasus, and foreign media created an image of terrorists as "fighters for independence." So, CNN reporters called the militants who committed the terrorist attack on Dubrovka "Chechen dissidents."

In 1999, the Americans founded the "Committee for Peace in Chechnya", which included politicians and figures with open Russophobic views. As an example, one can cite the former head of the CIA, J. Woolsey. The activities of the committee were aimed at recognizing the independence of Chechnya–Ichkeria in the international community, headed by A. Maskhadov. The organization itself, although it did not have open support from the US government, its connection with the American political elites is undeniable. The US special services provided support to militants in the Caucasus with personnel through the territory of Azerbaijan, where Al-Qaeda militants ("a terrorist organization banned in the territory of the Russian Federation") arrived. The connection of the CIA and its role in the formation of Osama bin Laden is confirmed by a series of investigations.

Russia's accusations of conducting cyber operations are also untenable. The Russian Federation was the first to declare the need to limit actions in cyberspace. In 1998, Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov sent a special message to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, in which the position was expressed on the inadmissibility of militarization of the virtual environment. This document formed the basis of the Russian resolution "Achievements in the field of informatization and telecommunications in the context of international security", which was presented at the 53rd session of the General Assembly ^[11]. In 2011 The Russian Federation proposed to adopt a resolution "On ensuring international information security". It was supposed to impose restrictions on the use of the Internet in order to interfere in the internal affairs of the state (including hacker attacks). For appropriate protective actions, it was proposed to give States special powers to regulate national segments of the Internet environment. The resolution did not receive support and met fierce resistance from the United States.  

The Americans were the first to declare the transformation of cyberspace into a military environment in 2006 ^{[4, p. 74]}. In 2015, this position was doctrinally consolidated in the "Strategy of Actions of the US Department of Defense in Cyberspace". It said that the actions of the United States in the virtual environment are defensive in nature, but Americans have the right to respond to threats to their country with all possible tools ^[9]. The strategy of 2018 has become more aggressive. The United States stated that the Americans have the right to launch preemptive cyberstrikes against enemy targets that pose a threat ^[9].

The targets of the United States in offensive operations in cyberspace are objects not only in Russia, but also in China. On September 13, 2022, Xinhua reported on the results of the investigation of cyber attacks on the Northwestern Polytechnic University of China. In the report of the Chinese National Center for Emergency Response to Computer Viruses, evidence was provided about the involvement of US NSA units in the cyberattack ^[20].

After the start of the SVO on February 24, 2022, there was a powerful surge in research in the West devoted to the analysis of the "Russian hybrid war". A few days before the start of the operation in Ukraine, F. Hoffman published his study "Russia's hybrid war against Ukraine" on the website of Deutsche Welle (recognized as a foreign agent in the territory of the Russian Federation). In this article, he stated that Russia no longer follows classical methods of warfare, using disinformation, mercenaries and cyber attacks to destroy Ukraine ^[31]. Considering the publications for 2022, we can note that there have been no significant conceptual changes in the views of Western authors on the "Russian hybrid war". The same set of tools are mentioned. Of the differences that have been found is territorial expansion. If Ukraine was the main focus of Russia's "hybrid attacks" in the period from 2014 to 2021, now the EU and NATO are joining it ^{[15] [35] [36] [41] [43] [44] [54] [58] [60]}. At the same time, the rhetoric of research has undergone significant changes. So, a huge emphasis is placed on the "barbaric policy of Russia in Ukraine." Western experts even introduced the term "barbaric warfare" ("barbaric warfare"), which means strikes against civilian infrastructure. In these studies, Russia is accused of destroying power plants, hospital water supply systems and committing numerous war crimes ^{[14] [42] [55] [34]}.

The charges are not supported by any evidence base. In 2019, in her blog, researcher E. Davidson published the material "The Physical Destruction of Iraq's infrastructure in the Gulf War" ^[23]. In it, she revealed how NATO during the Gulf War almost completely destroyed the civilian infrastructure of Iraq (water supply, electricity, water treatment, sewerage, communication and transport systems, agricultural enterprises, schools, hospitals, food warehouses) ^[23]. The study cites statements by US Air Force officers who commented on the events as follows:

"We have been hitting infrastructure to strengthen the effect of sanctions"

"The psychological impact on the residents of Iraq was only a side effect of the strikes on infrastructure"

"Strikes were inflicted on "objects that enable the country to stand"

"What is meant by innocent. They live there and they definitely have an influence on what is happening in the country."^[23]

Western authors accuse Russia of what NATO troops have been doing for many years on the territories of Yugoslavia, Iraq and Afghanistan. Fabricated cases, like the "tragedy in Bucha", are not supported by any weighty evidence, but represent only a pathetic insinuation in order to accuse Russia. At the same time, numerous crimes committed by the Armed Forces of Ukraine and foreign mercenaries were proved by domestic law enforcement agencies and the military Prosecutor's Office. In order to demonize the image of Russia, Western experts do not hesitate to rewrite history. Researcher M. Kramer, seeking to accuse Russia of numerous war crimes, draws parallels with the events of the Second World War. Thus, he points out that Russian troops invaded Ukraine in the same way as the Red Army in 1939, indicating that this event was the beginning of the Second World War ^[37]. The article is saturated with an abundance of Russophobic statements:

"The Red Army committed rampant atrocities and mass killings during the occupation of Eastern Poland, Finland and other Eastern European countries"

"Putin awards the units of the Russian army involved in monstrous crimes in the same way as the Soviet leadership awarded the Red Army troops during World War II"

"Soviet soldiers are known for numerous rapes in the occupied territories... In Ukraine, Russian soldiers have earned a similar reputation over the past few weeks" ^[37].

      It is absolutely impossible to call this material a scientific study – it is an open Russophobic lampoon engaged in inciting national hatred and distorting historical reality, fitting within the framework of modern Western politics.

Conclusion

Hybrid warfare, despite a wide array of publications and studies, remains a poorly studied phenomenon from a practical point of view. One of the main problems is the excessive ideologization of the issue when considering it in both domestic and foreign scientific discourse. Hybrid warfare has become in the hands of the media resource of European and Asian countries, a practical "cliche" for interpreting any actions of a hostile state that do not fit into the model of traditional tactics of warfare. The natural result was the absence of any international norms capable of regulating the conduct of hybrid operations, due to excessively vague formulations. However, in the case of concretization and in-depth study of this phenomenon, a positive outcome of the creation and functioning of "military law" seems unlikely. International humanitarian law, created in the period from the second half of the XX century to the beginning of the XXI century, was supposed, according to its plan, to refrain the parties to the conflict from using destructive measures of warfare. The experience of armed conflicts over the past 30 years demonstrates that the countries participating in these conventions can not only circumvent these restrictions, but also go into direct violation without fear of consequences from international organizations. Thus, it serves as one of the proofs that the creation of restrictive measures against hybrid warfare will not lead to the refusal of world and regional powers from conducting hybrid operations. 

The West has not only been conducting hybrid operations against Russia and China for a long time, but also uses the scientific study of the issue itself as a tool to promote the anti-Russian agenda. The thesis that hybrid warfare is a development of Russia was put forward by M. Galleoti, who went to deliberate forgery in the review of V. Gerasimov's article in order to attract the attention of the public and the scientific community. The expert's direct insinuation was soon transformed into a coherent theory that hybrid warfare is Russia's development to destroy the Western world. Foreign military analysts and political experts insist that the West is lagging behind on this issue, demanding the development of not only defensive, but also retaliatory measures. Thus, realizing the ancient formula "Carthage must be destroyed". The publications of foreign authors expose the destabilization of the global military and political situation as a result of Russia's deliberate actions. Experts include information warfare, cyber operations, the use of irregular formations on the territory of other countries, as well as the use of energy resources as an instrument of pressure in its hybrid tools.

According to the results of the study, it was revealed that the West was the first to use the entire set of these tools during armed campaigns in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, and also use them in the conflict in Ukraine. At the same time, the Russian Federation, from the very beginning of its formation, initiated the development of measures limiting the same conduct of war in cyberspace.

The humanitarian and scientific sphere in the West today has become another political tool in the hands of European and American political elites. The works of Western political experts in the period under review are not professional, independent expert, but are only a continuation of the Russophobic rhetoric of European and American politicians. Considering hybrid warfare as a development of Russia is a continuation of the West's policy of discrediting the image of our country. Initially, M. Galleoti's erroneous views led to an information boom among European and American political and military experts. In publications from 2014 to 2022, researchers, using ephemeral evidence, accuse Russia of committing anti-humanistic actions that NATO troops have successfully used over the past 30 years. Such rhetoric demonstrates that humanitarian research in the West in the field of military and political analytics has turned into the same tool of Russophobic propaganda as Western media and cinema.