Understanding Hybrid Warfare On The Russian-Ukrainian Conflict

War is one of the events that human civilization generally fears but it cannot be avoided. War events occur not without reason, usually occur because of a dispute between two sides who do not want to succumb to an interest, be it social, political, or economic interests and so on.

Changes in the conditions of the strategic environment in the 21st abase caused many actors to adjust in the face of it, and the end of the cold war brought winds of change in the international order. 

The cold war period synonymous with the use of strategy and military force has experienced a slight decline. the presence of scientific and technological developments, resulting in a change in the method of war from traditional warfare to modern warfare, can be seen and felt in the type of "Hybrid Warfare".      

Hybrid Warfare is basically a modification of the concept of the conventional warfare model by equating all the instruments owned for simultaneous use using conventional power. However, the agreement among thinkers regarding the definition of hybrid warfare has not yet reached a point of agreement among strategic thinkers, and it is even still a conflict in itself.

The absence of a universal definition results in an agreed-upon perception that hybrid warfare is an attempt to distort the circumstances that give rise to a situation between war and peace. 

Meanwhile, the definition of hybrid warfare for the west (NATO) says that hybrid warfare is a picture of the efforts made by Russia in Ukraine in various ways beyond conventional boundaries to achieve the superiority of western countries in conventional aspects.

Simply put, hybrid warfare is a theory of military strategy, the term hybrid warfare was first proposed by Frank Hoffman, which used political warfare and combined conventional warfare, disorderly warfare, and cyber warfare with other methods that affect, such as fake news wars, diplomacy, law fare, and foreign electoral intervention.

By combining kinetic operations with subversive efforts, the aggressor has the intent to avoid attribution or retribution. In addition, hybrid warfare can be used to describe flexible and complex battles pace dynamics that require highly adaptable and resilient responses.

The concept of Hybrid Warfare may not be entirely new, already many practitioners argue that hybrid warfare is as old as war itself. However, Hybrid Warfare has had significant relevance in recent years as states employ non-state and information technology actors to subdue their enemies during or more importantly, in the absence of overt direct armed conflict.

As an asymmetric approach, hybrid warfare continues to seek to achieve large-scale consequences using a variety of simple means, such as by inhibiting enemy military operations or preventing the emergence of popular political support.

The new concept of hybrid warfare has begun to be commonly used by countries and policymakers who must enforce their power in any way, this method of hybrid warfare in the war began to be used at a time when conventional war strategies were already less effective. 

The concept of hybrid warfare is very different and is predicted to be increasingly widely used by regimes in many countries.

The concept of hybrid warfare has emerged since the end of the Cold War in the 20th century, conflict is no longer by shedding blood and resulting in many injuries however, it is widening to other sides of human life such as life in cyberspace or the internet which is increasingly taking an important role in human life in the current 21st century. 

The hybrid warfare method began to be taken and the method was taken seriously by various actors. The use of such methods used by Russia is seen in the case of cyber attacks in Estonia.

Russia is one of the world's superpowers and is one of the permanent members of the UN Security Council since the end of World War II. This country left by the Soviet Union has a fairly strong influence in the Eastern European region and is a dominating country, especially in the region. 

Thus, Russia has considerable power and can intervene in other countries, both countries in the European region and outside the European region.

When the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Russia as the largest fractional state of its territory consistently maintained its national security and demonstrated its ability as an important and power-held state throughout its various domestic policy and foreign policy formulations. 

After the dismissal of the Soviet Union in 1990, relations between Russia and the former Soviet countries were unstable. Russia continues to maintain its dominance in the breakaway states of the USSR through a wide variety of economic, political, and even military activities to date.

In exploring its role and achieving its national interests, especially in Eastern European countries that are fragments of the Soviet Union, Russia uses the hybrid warfare method that seems to have been used since 2007. 

Where there was a cyber attack on Estonian infrastructure which at that time aroused the anger of the Russian people due to the removal of the Bronze Soldier statue by the Estonian government which was considered an act of discrimination.

As a result of the cyber attack, Estonian's government system was stopped and considerable losses were felt. Therefore, with its various interests, Russia can make various efforts in achieving this goal, one of which is using hybrid warfare which does not have to use force militarily overtly. 

The hybrid warfare method was again used by Russia in the case of the conflict that occurred in Ukraine. One of the countries in which Russia has an interest in Ukraine.

Ukraine is a country located in the Eastern European region and has a fairly strategic position in the black sea region and has quite a lot of mineral resources, in addition, Ukraine is the largest country in Europe which has important natural resources which are especially for the Russian state.

Looking at the historical arc, Russia and Ukraine have a fairly close relationship where Ukraine itself is one of the breakaway countries of the Soviet Union, it is said that the relationship between the two countries is quite close, as evidenced in 1954 by the leader of the Soviet Union who ceded the Crimean region where the region has strong cultural ties with Russia.

Nevertheless, relations between Russia and Ukraine are not improving, especially as Russia makes various efforts to achieve its interests in Ukraine.

There were demonstrations due to dissatisfaction with the policies of victor Yanukovych's government, which received funds from Russia that refused to borrow from the European Union and ousted president Victor Yanukovych. 

On February 27, 2014, unidentified gunmen associated with Russia's military intelligence apparatus seized the buildings of major public institutions in Crimea and raised Russian flags on them.

Seeing this, it has urged the Ukrainian government to send troops which have led to an arms conflict between the people who support Russia and the Ukrainian army. Thus, Russia intervened under the pretext of protecting ethnic and Russian-speaking people.

Thus, the reason Russia intervened was that it was to protect ethnic and Russian-speaking people. In less than a week, Russia took control of the peninsula, and on March 18, 2014, it annexed Crimea. There were separatist actions in Eastern Ukraine, especially in cities such as Donetsk, Luhansk, and Harkov.

The separatist action called for his dissatisfaction with the new leadership. All actions are accompanied by strong and trusted diplomatic, economic, and media engagement campaigns. The action was supported by various large Russian military units and marched along the border with Ukraine.

Since May 2014, Russia has used non-state actors in Eastern Ukraine to act as proxies in the war, carried out by providing money and combat equipment until Russia has been able to control the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. 

Russia also carried out cyber attacks against Ukraine where in 2014 there were wiretaps or phone attacks on lawmakers, while also attacking several official Ukrainian government websites and the attacks affected presidential elections.

Then, in 2015 there was a cyber attack on a Ukrainian electricity distribution company. Not only that, Russia involved various media, the Russian-owned media set editorial rules aimed at manipulating the facts regarding the annexation of Crimea and propaganda. In addition, it also restricts sites believed to be opposed to Russian rule.

Economically, the existence of this hybrid warfare can greatly benefit Russia, in distributing energy from Russia through pipelines that pass through Ukraine into one of Russia's revenues, which will result in energy dependence that will cause other countries to follow the rules made by Russia. Making the Russian state a strategic position in Europe.

At the same time, Russia started an economic and cyber war in Ukraine and has organized espionage activities on its territory and then successfully annexed in the absence of military force, the actions of the Russians are highly coordinated and patterned where local separatists are supporting Russia and the use of Russian media. So this is described as an example of a form of hybrid warfare.

As a result, Russia's actions made Ukraine face various internal and external problems that arose in 2018, the internal problems faced were the political elite and oligarchs who had made the presidential election campaign and were scheduled for March 2019, 

And the parliamentary elections in October 2019, where at that time the country and society were in a tidal situation of mutual trust with each other.

During the campaign period, politicians killed each other's reputations rather than giving people new development strategy ideas. Political developments in Ukraine will center on elections at the end of 2019. 

This is a time when there is a political disturbance with unknown consequences in the future, especially where state institutions still do not have a strong existence.

An external problem for Ukraine is the hybrid warfare carried out by Russia. Because for Russia, Ukraine is a suitable country for testing hybrid warfare methods and military equipment. By the method of divorcing ukrainian society, weakened its reform process.

Then there was another form of hybrid warfare carried out by Russia against Ukraine, it was seen that the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine and the two largest banks, namely PrivatBank and Oshadbank, had become victims of cyber attacks (19/02/2022).

For some time, customers could not use the card or online banking systems. The incident occurred when artillery guns were reportedly active around rebel areas in Luhansk and Donetsk.

Then at the same time, the Russian parliament planned to give official recognition to the rebel-formed republic in the east of Ukraine. This is done not without purpose, but there is a goal of securing influence, in the form of demonstrations of military force such as troop mobilization, military exercises in Belarus, or also coordinated communication.

In addition, there are some government websites targeted by massive cyber attacks, one of the websites that were attacked by cyber attacks was the website of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, on some hacked websites, a text appeared saying that all Ukrainian data uploaded to the network had become public.

The writing says "Ukraine, All your data has been uploaded to the public network all the data on the computer is destroyed, it is impossible to recover it, and all the information about you has become public. Be careful and prepare for the worst. This is for your past, present, and future".

The hybrid warfare strategy is geared towards dictating a narrative in which the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, is a graduate of the KGB's secret service, certainly mastering how asymmetric warfare is more broadly and profoundly. What was used was a battered strategy, in which they sought to suppress domestic political discourse in Ukraine to deflect the bow in a more pro-Russian direction.

Then, it had a huge impact on the Ukrainian economy, a pro-European direction in Ukraine that was fully supported by the government and businesses in the European Union. Therefore, the goal of hybrid warfare by Russia is to subdue the Ukrainian economy.

In addition, resulting in hybrid warfare, there are great doubts about Ukraine, which can be predicted to keep investors away from Ukraine.

After looking at the case regarding Russia's hybrid warfare model against Ukraine, we must begin to realize that the warfare model has changed into a form that is "not visible" in a fairly broad sense. This means that anyone can carry out war in various ways and methods. 

When the enemy conducts hybrid warfare, defense preparations cannot be carried out immediately because it concerns various other aspects such as economic, political, social, cultural, informational, cyber, and so on.