RUSSIA’S HYBRID WARFARE – WHY NARRATIVES AND IDEATIONAL FACTORS PLAY A ROLE IN INTERNATIONAL POLITICS
RUSSIA’S HYBRID WARFARE – WHY NARRATIVES AND IDEATIONAL FACTORS PLAY A ROLE IN INTERNATIONAL POLITICS

Summary/Abstract: The article’s main objective is to discuss Russia’s hybrid warfare in terms of both material and ideational factors. Therefore, a social-constructivist interpretation will show that an important part of Russia’s “hybrid warfare” revolves around ideational factors and discourse constructions. In other words, alongside cyber, kinetic, information, malware operations, backed up by auxiliary troops (which in this approach represent material facts), a narrative meant to explain Russia’s rationale played an equally important role (and these were ideational facts). The first part will briefly present the origins and features of hybrid warfare. The second part will tackle Russia’s hybrid warfare as a response to asymmetry at the global level. The last part will stress a different form of “hybridity” in Russia’s recent action, which entails both material facts (the blended strategies employed in eastern Ukraine) and ideational facts (the Russian narrative of events and the meanings assigned to Russian actions).

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