GEOPOLITICAL ASPECTS OF POLITICS AND INSTRUMENTALIZATION OF THE PHENOMENON OF HYBRID WARFARE IN THE CONTEXT OF THE UKRAINIAN CONFLICT

Abstract

From the beginning of the "Ukrainian conflict", starting with the annexation of Crimea (2014) until the beginning of the special military operation of the Russian forces in Eastern Ukraine, the existing concept of hybrid warfare - developed during the past fifteen years - has been questioned and is currently exposed to numerous criticisms and is exposed to the demands of its reconceptualization. Despite high expectations, especially in the West, particularly in the segment where it tries to explain the Russian way of hybrid warfare, it is in a complete contrast with the events "on the ground". Recent research and analysis of the Western concept of Russian hybrid warfare, in addition to the evident obsession, numerous misconceptions, vagueness and unacceptably superficial strategic analysis of the West about the Russian military-theoretical thought, capacities to adapt and use of hybrid means and techniques below the very threshold of conventional war ("grey zone" ), clearly prove that the concept of hybrid warfare, as conceived in the West, has not survived the "test of time" and that under the strong pressure of political and geostrategic complexity, it rapidly generates numerous problems and challenges, which in synergy require new reflexive-conceptual measures. As a reflection of such understanding of hybrid war in the West, a convergent prejudice was created that the Russian side is developing and implementing a strategy of hybrid warfare on the territory of Ukraine and beyond, which represents a kind of semantic paradox. Analogously, the performances of numerous independent scientific institutions and researchers and strategists on the hybrid war in Russia are becoming more and more expressed, who jointly promote the thesis that the West has been waging a total hybrid war against Russia for a long time and that all these efforts of the West are an expression of open politicization and instrumentalization of the concept of hybrid warfare.