proposal

Hybrid Warfare Transformed Amidst the Ukraine War: Russian Tactics and the Global Diffusion of Threat

Introduction: The Era of Hybrid Warfare and the Significance of the Ukraine War

The Russian invasion of Ukraine, which began in February 2022, has not only drastically shaken the European security order since World War II but has also redefined the concept of war itself. Traditionally, war was a "limited act" centered on military action. However, in modern times, military, economic, information, and psychological domains are interpenetrated, thereby giving rise to a "war without borders." The dominant method employed there is "hybrid warfare."1

Hybrid warfare is a mode of warfare that combines regular military forces with irregular means to undermine an enemy's state functions and social trust from within. In 2009, American military theorist Frank Hoffman defined it as compound warfare that combines regular, irregular, terrorist, and criminal elements in pursuit of strategic objectives.2 Since the outbreak of the Ukraine war, Russia has diversified, complicated, and developed hybrid warfare into a comprehensive strategy targeting the state regime itself. It is difficult to sustain any single definitive definition. Few experts claim to be able to define it conclusively. This suggests that Russia's hybrid warfare is evolving rapidly and becoming increasingly unpredictable.

Under the Putin administration, Russia combines a broad array of measures as part of its national strategy, including military aggression, energy supply disruptions, food export manipulation, election interference, cognitive warfare on social media, and deep fake information warfare employing AI. These combinations, going beyond the traditional category of "irregular warfare," have been institutionalized as measures to "turn society into a battlefield."

When Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, it actively employed information warfare and cyberattacks, conducting military operations by adopting the so-called "Little Green Men" tactics to disguise its identity.3 In the ongoing war in Ukraine since 2022, Russia has incorporated new elements, such as generative AI, cryptocurrencies, influence operations using non-state actors, and the weaponization of refugees and migrants, while strengthening traditional measures. Hybrid warfare is transforming into an institutionalized, ordinary action of a state.

This qualitative change in warfare does not merely suggest a Russian peculiarity but a structural shift in the international order. During the Cold War, military deterrence played a crucial role in preventing war. Today, society's information and economic infrastructure has emerged as a "defense line." The Putin administration's information manipulation and election interference, pursued in parallel with its military invasion of Ukraine, are emblematic of an "era of proliferating battlefields."

Meanwhile, the prolonged Ukraine war has demonstrated that Russia can mobilize all of its resources to maintain its war sustainability despite mounting economic pressure due to sanctions. Russia has been subject to sanctions since 2014, but its economy has rather become stronger through efforts to review and streamline its trade partners and structures; the restoration of its declining industries, and the expansion of domestic demand. Thanks also to the prowess of Russian Central Bank Governor Elvira Nabiullina, the Russian economy remains stable. Although the sanctions imposed upon Russia since 2022 have been extremely harsh, the country has managed to withstand them by resorting to a wartime economy and selling large quantities of cheap energy to China, India, Turkey, etc.

As the Ukraine war unfolded, hybrid warfare expanded significantly in content, scope, and level, particularly from 2023 to 2024. Behind this was the existence of the Special Services Directorate (SSD) established in 2023. The creation of the SSD marked a "turning point in Russia's hybrid warfare"; it "raised traditional intelligence and sabotage activities to a strategy for manipulating international disruptions."4

Due to space constraints, this paper focuses on three changes in Russian hybrid warfare since the outbreak of the Ukraine war: airspace violations, election interference, and economic and information warfare. It aims to demonstrate that the Ukraine war is not just a local conflict but represents fundamental changes in the mode of warfare in the 21st century, heralding the "advent of an era of hybrid warfare," which poses a common threat to the world.

1. A Turning Point in Russia's Hybrid Warfare: The Creation of the SSD

The Special Services Directorate (SSD) was created within the Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation (GRU) in 2023. It is an organization emblematic of the institutionalization of Russia's hybrid warfare. Its creation has obviously widened the scope of attacks against Europe and the United States: Their content has become more diverse, and their intensity has significantly increased.

A CSIS (Center for Strategic and International Studies) report, "Russia's Shadow War Against the West" (2024), defines the SSD as "a new command post directing the shadow war against the West" and positions its creation as "a tectonic turning point in Russia's hybrid strategy."

The SSD features the first-ever cross-border collaboration between several agencies, including the GRU's existing intelligence divisions (Units 29155, 74455, 16165, etc.), the FSB (Federal Security Service), the SVR (Foreign Intelligence Service), and GUGI (Main Directorate for Deep Sea Research). This represents a qualitative difference from the Cold War era. Previously, these agencies were often competitive with each other, and their mutual distrust was alleged to have hindered information sharing. The creation of the SSD has evolved the previous "fragmented intelligence organizations" into an "integrated influence operations system." This move can be seen as Russia's strategic response to NATO's strengthening sanctions and its defense network against Russia, which has become apparent since 2016. In short, instead of squarely countering NATO's military deterrence, the SSD focuses on "eroding the political and social infrastructure of the West through institutionalized influence operations."

The above-mentioned CSIS report and a 2024 CSCE (Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe) report5 estimate that the SSD comprises at least five operational divisions.

Divisions Main Functions
Division 1 (Unit 29155) Assassinations and sabotage (e.g., the Czech munitions depot bombing, the Skripal incident)
Division 2 (Unit 74455) Cyberattacks and information manipulation (NotPetya, SolarWinds-related)
Division 3 Infiltration of foreign companies and universities, technological espionage
Division 4 Financial and economic influence operations, sanctions evasion schemes
Division 5 Recruitment and training of foreign agents (primarily Serbia and the Balkans)

Divisions 2 and 5 deserve particular attention. The former controls the automated generation of disinformation using AI and the dissemination of disinformation on social media, while the latter is responsible for nurturing "cognitive warfare" personnel. These operations are distinct from traditional espionage activities in that they aim to embed "self-destructive narratives" in the internal structure of society.

SSD operations are unfolding in multiple dimensions: physical, psychological, and economic. In the physical realm, there has been a sharp increase in sabotage (bombings, arson, etc.) and drone attacks against critical infrastructure and shopping centers across Europe. From 2023 to 2024, there were numerous reports of Russian attacks on power grids and undersea cables in the Baltic Sea from Poland, Germany, and Norway.

In the psychological and informational realm, the SSD has deployed since 2024 multi-layered disinformation operations making extensive use of AI, such as "Doppelganger," "Overlord," and "Matryoshka," which tamper with existing, highly reliable videos from Western media to craft large numbers of ostensibly credible fake videos and upload them in combination. It has become apparent that these operations feature a "nested information structure," letting multiple groups of fake accounts cite each other to create illusory credibility.6 Reportedly, Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University, under the Russian Ministry of Defense, has developed the "Narrative Bot System," which applies natural language generation models to automate the spread of disinformation in major European languages.

Russia's AI-driven information warfare is coupled with conventional operations of physical attacks on fact-checking organizations of the West, thereby crafting a hybrid attack system aimed at "cognitive saturation" and undermining trust in those fact-checking organizations.

The goal of the SSD's action is not mere retaliation. The 2024 CSIS report points out that "the SSD's ultimate goal is to expand Russia's freedom of action by paralyzing Western decision-making."

Specifically, the SSD aims at: (1) destroying the infrastructure of trust in European society; (2) provoking division among NATO member states; and (3) helping to emerge pro-Russian and anti-EU forces through election interference, or undermining public trust in elections and democracy.

The SSD has turned Moldova, in particular, into a "testbed" for a combination of physical attacks and intelligence operations.

The SSD also conducts probing to measure NATO's reaction times. The September 2025 drone violation of Polish airspace was reportedly designed to gain a precise assessment of the NATO allies' interception process and political thresholds. Afterward, Russia's airspace violations by using drones and fighter jets continued in many parts of Europe. In the areas that sustained airspace violations, such as Poland's Lublin Voivodeship, alarms and subsequent erroneous alarms are said to have frightened children; Russian attacks have also had the effect of evoking psychological fear and social unrest among the people of the targeted nations.

These operations cannot be explained by any conventional military deterrence theory. Russia's actions may be analyzed as opening a new dimension of attacking the adversary's "willingness to defend" instead of its defense systems. This move is a prime example of "multi-domain hybrid warfare," integrating psychological, information, and economic warfare. The creation of the SSD is considered to have transformed Russia's hybrid warfare from "contingent tactics" to a "constant strategy." Hybrid warfare is now incorporated into Russia's foreign policy itself, and it can be said that a peculiar system has been established for strategically manipulating the political structure, public opinion, and economic dependence of target countries. In this sense, the SSD may be positioned as the core organization responsible for "institutionalized hybrid warfare."

2. Russia's Expanding Attacks on Europe and Europe's Reorganization of Defenses

Since the inauguration of the SSD, Russia's hybrid warfare has expanded beyond the Ukrainian front, entering a stage of turning the territories of NATO member states into testing grounds. Since September 2025, there have been repeated incursions by unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) believed to be Russian-made in Poland, Latvia, Finland, Norway, and as far as northern Germany. Russian fighter jets also violated airspace, causing the temporary closure of several airports in those countries.

The Polish airspace violation incident on September 9-10 was particularly symbolic. An estimated 19-23 drones violated Polish airspace, causing the temporary closure of four airports, including one in Warsaw; Polish and Dutch fighter jets shot down three drones. In response to this incident, the Polish government invoked Article 4 of the North Atlantic Treaty, which provides for the possibility of joint consultations between NATO allies; NATO launched Operation Eastern Sentry. As a result, NATO strengthened its surveillance of eastern airspace with a clear recognition that the Ukraine war could reach the skies of its allies.

These drone intrusions are not accidental acts, but have clear political and strategic objectives.

First comes "probing," designed to test NATO's reaction speed and political thresholds. It aims at visualizing NATO's decision-making process regarding the level of intrusion at which NATO should issue an alert and the scale of counterattacks it should employ.

Second, by using cheap UAVs, Russia aims to impose "defense cost asymmetry" on NATO countries: A single Russian-made drone costs only a few thousand dollars, while missiles for interception and fighter-jet scrambling will cost NATO countries hundreds of thousands of dollars. In short, Russia is forcing NATO to engage in costly defense by low-cost attacks, thereby causing economic attrition on the NATO side.

Third, these intrusions cause "societal fatigue" through disruptions to civil aviation, delays in logistics, and psychological damage to the tourism industry. In the fall of 2025, Poland's "air safety myth" was shattered when airport closures ensued due to Russian drone incursions; a public opinion poll revealed that approximately 68% of the citizens believed that "war would spread to their country."7

Russian drones are not merely a means of physical intrusion; they are also used as platforms for attacks on the electronic and information domains. Russia engages in GPS signal jamming, transmitting false coordinates, and even drone-relayed cyber intrusions. In the Nordic region, Russian drone flight paths have frequently been observed in close proximity to the region's communications infrastructure. Disruptions to air and maritime traffic due to radio interference are also reported.8

In response, NATO introduced a three-tiered defense initiative "Counter-Unmanned Aerial Systems (C-UAS)." This is an integrated defense network consisting of three stages: (1) detection, (2) jamming, and (3) neutralization―a combination of electronic warfare (soft kill) and physical interception (hard kill).

In this process, Europe was for the first time required to make a policy shift to defend "infospace" in addition to airspace. In other words, "territorial airspace" in the context of hybrid warfare refers to a conceptual domain that encompasses data and radio waves.

The "drone wall" initiative, launched by the Nordic and Baltic states in 2024 in response to these mounting threats, is an attempt to install a multi-layered network of surveillance, electronic warfare, and air defense along their borders to prevent cross-border drone intrusions from Russia and Belarus. Anything but a physical barrier, this is a hybrid border defense initiative combining sensors, jamming, and information sharing, and is considered emblematic of a new security architecture for NATO's eastern front. The drone wall initiative has now become an official EU policy aimed at making it operational by 2027.9

However, the initiative is not free from challenges―border transgression by radio interference, imbalances in cost sharing, and vulnerability to cyberattacks. The overlap in NATO and EU command structures remains unresolved.

Nevertheless, this initiative signaled a policy shift in Europe by defining hybrid warfare as a "defensive target" for the first time. This shift is emblematic of the strengthened cooperation between the EU and NATO.

Meanwhile, related social issues must be resolved. The goal of hybrid warfare is not the physical destruction of the enemy, but the psychological division of its society. For example, when Poland sustained airspace violations, various false information and fake videos from Russia and Belarus were posted on social media, obliging the Polish government to issue a warning.10 At that time, Russia skillfully combined drone operations and Doppelganger operations.

Building on this, European society is witnessing the burgeoning of a new form of resilience known as "civil defense." For instance, Poland and Finland are operating a framework to address misinformation and confusion by introducing a network that combines existing public warnings (SMS app) and official public relations.

Consequently, Russia's hybrid attacks have had a "paradoxical effect" of advancing Europe's integrated air defense initiative and raising civil defense awareness. The drone wall initiative has another connotation: the defense of democracy. Russia has sought to undermine Western democracy. As a specific example, the next section will focus on Russia's election interference in Moldova in 2024-25.

3. Election Interference and the Crisis of Democracy―The Case of Moldova

The ultimate goal of hybrid warfare is to disrupt the enemy's state functions from within, not from without. Election interference and information manipulation are extremely effective tools for Russia, for they are cheaper than military invasion and exploit ambiguities in international law.

After the outbreak of the Ukraine war, Russia's "political warfare" underwent a qualitative shift. Instead of a one-off disinformation campaign, Russia established a complex interference system that incorporates cyberattacks, information warfare that combines social media manipulation with AI-generated information, and money scattering.

There are countless examples of Russia's election interference. This article focuses on the case of Moldova, where Russia engaged in large-scale election interference for two consecutive years, fully mobilizing its tactics and skills.

The Moldovan presidential election and referendum on accession to the EU, held in the fall of 2024, were anticipated to result in a landslide victory for pro-European President Maia Sandu and likewise an overwhelming support for EU membership. Against all expectations, Sandu survived a close runoff vote, while the referendum also ended in a close result, with 50.16% in favor and 49.84% against. Behind this was Russia's large-scale and sophisticated election interference using money scattering, information manipulation, and cyberattacks.

From the testimonies of many people I met in Moldova, I learned that Russia had invested massive funds worth about 5.9 billion yen (≈ €32.6 million) in their operations, manipulated information using social media and TikTok, and unleashed cyberattacks on the Moldovan government.

Russia launched propaganda linking European integration to the "loss of nationhood," making efforts on multiple fronts to discredit the policies of the ruling PAS party. Narratives such as "EU membership will increase prices tenfold" and "reconciliation with Russia is the only way to achieve peace" were disseminated among young people; as a result, public opinion polls reported that support for EU membership temporarily fell to the 40% range.

Russia also transferred the amount worth approximately 6 billion yen (≈ €33.1 million) to its agents in Moldova through its state-owned bank, Promsvyazbank, to fund the pro-Russian political party, the Pobeda (Victory) Coalition. The funds were used not only to finance the election campaigns of pro-Russian candidates but also to distribute cash handouts to approximately 138,000 citizens under the guise of "living assistance" in exchange for their votes. The primary target of this money scattering, in the forms of cash, electronic money, and prepaid cards, was pensioners and the poor; much of that money also flowed to young people through online games and Telegram.

On the day of the presidential run-off election in November 2024, the servers of the Central Election Commission of the Republic of Moldova (CEC) were subjected to cyberattacks, causing delays in the processing of voter registration apps at polling stations (the CEC's official press conference report). Furthermore, before and after the 2025 parliamentary elections, the government and election-related infrastructure were also subjected to large-scale DDoS attacks. Russia is alleged to have become involved in both cases.

The Gagauzia autonomous region in the south and Transnistria in the east are exposed to harsh Russian attacks. Russia's 14th Army is still stationed in the latter. As it has been deprived of its supply route via Ukraine since Russia's 2014 annexation of Crimea, its military strength has declined. Yet, its political presence remains strong.

In the Gagauzia autonomous region, Evgenia Gutsul, the head of the region, was arrested in March on suspicion of illegal campaign financing. The man behind the case, Ilan Shor, deserves special attention. Convicted of corruption and currently in exile in Russia, Shor continues to wield influence as the leader of the Shor Party, pulling strings of local pro-Russian politics. He is also known for his close ties to Moscow, particularly his friendship with Russian spokesperson Dmitry Peskov and his wife.

During my research in Moldova in early March 2025, I learned that many impoverished residents who live from hand to mouth cannot help but accept money from the pro-Russian factions, despite actually favoring the country's EU membership. Furthermore, many NGOs that have sustained democracy in the region are facing difficulties in continuing their activities due to the suspension of USAID funding. Moldova is currently under a three-fold attack on funding, information, and organizations. Russia's behavior is no doubt unacceptable, but the current state of Moldova reminds us that economic development is crucial to democratization.

There is a risk that this "silent invasion" could spread to other regions of the former Soviet Union. If Moldova were to be absorbed once again into the Russian sphere of influence, it would signify the collapse of European security and could have a serious impact on international order and market stability. Moldova's main territory is the former Bessarabia region of Romania. In Romania, the 2024 presidential election was canceled and rescheduled for 2025 due to massive Russian election interference. Russia is said to have used a similar set of tricks and tactics of interference for both countries.

In the Moldovan parliamentary elections held on September 28, 2025, the ruling party PAS won 55 of the 101 seats, acquiring a 50.20% share of the vote and barely securing a majority. Russian interference at that time was more systemic and complex than that in 2024. Just before the elections, it was discovered that Moldovan citizens had been trained in Serbia to provoke riots and engage in sabotage; Serbian police arrested two of the training organizers. Moldovan authorities also conducted as many as 250 house searches across the country, detaining 74 people suspected to have been involved in planning riots and receiving funds for that purpose. On either side of the election day, false information was spread including AI-generated videos designed to evoke the viewer's doubt about the fairness of the elections; Russia unleashed information warfare to undermine public trust in the government and the election commission. In response, the Moldovan authorities strengthened their cyber defenses―uncovering the flow of funds by means of cryptocurrencies and blocking a large-scale DDoS attack (898 million malicious requests) against the Central Election Commission (CEC).11

Meanwhile, Russia accelerated its influence operations toward the Russian diaspora (overseas voters) and sought to spread pro-Russian discourses through the clergy and the "Matryoshka" bot network.12 OSCE and EU observer missions characterize this series of cyberattacks, disinformation, and illegal funding as a hybrid attack on the election process.13

The objective of Russia's election interference is not to ensure the victory of particular candidates, but to embed distrust in elections and democracy. Creating a situation in which citizens "don't know what to believe" is precisely the political disturbance that Russia seeks. Democracy is built not only on the electoral system but also on the social infrastructure of "trust." Destroying that trust is the most lethal attack in hybrid warfare.

Through these experiences, European countries are strengthening election monitoring and information literacy education, but Russia's hybrid warfare is always several steps ahead of their efforts, thanks to technological advances. Russia's hybrid warfare is exploiting the values that democracies cherish—transparency and freedom of expression—to dismantle those nations from within. Democratic countries are facing the immense challenge of how to confront this awkward predicament, where their own strengths become their weaknesses.

The next section will discuss "sanctions retaliation" as economic, information, and psychological warfare―another important pillar of Russia's hybrid warfare―and the weaponization of resources.

4. "The Economy as a Battlefield": "Sanctions Retaliation" as Economic, Information, and Psychological Warfare

Following the outbreak of the Ukraine war, Western countries imposed an unprecedented scale of economic sanctions on Russia. Financial sanctions, exclusion from SWIFT, an embargo on semiconductors and other products convertible to military use, and a crude oil price cap were initially estimated to be capable of disrupting the Russian economy. However, the Russian economy has managed to avoid complete collapse and has rather maintained a certain degree of stability up until 2025, thanks to its hybrid economic strategy that combines a strategic approach to adapting to and evading sanctions with a complete wartime economy.

Since its annexation of Crimea in 2014, Russia has already become accustomed to sanctions and has systematically built alternative trade routes and trade blocs with emerging countries. Since 2022, Russia has continued to secure Western products through "parallel imports" via Kazakhstan, Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, Georgia, etc. Around 2024, Western countries began imposing "secondary sanctions" on these bypassing countries; as a result, bypassing trade volume has been declining. Yet, this structure is not simply a trade loophole but reorganizes economic networks as logistics lines of hybrid warfare. Many former Soviet republics benefited from wartime demand through the Russian economy14 while simultaneously contributing to a further fragmentation of the sanctions regime.

Russia's energy policy constitutes part of its most adept hybrid warfare strategy. Although sanctions tremendously reduced Russia's energy exports to Europe, Russia secured foreign currency earnings by exporting large quantities of cheap energy to China, India, Turkey, etc. The key to this strategy lies not simply in supply adjustments but in "energy psychological warfare," which manipulates the psychology of hostile countries through price fluctuations. For example, in Europe during the winter of 2022-23, European markets overreacted whenever reports of cuts in Russian gas production were released, resulting in price hikes due to a "chain of anxiety" rather than actual supply shortages. This increased concerns among European citizens, leading to criticism of support for Ukraine. Support for Ukraine has thus become a major issue in many elections in Europe, which is believed to have contributed to the recent ascent of populist and right-wing administrations. Exploiting this "psychological fatigue," Russia repeatedly disseminates the narrative that "sanctions are tormenting European citizens"―a typical complex hybrid warfare that combines economic and information operations.

Russia has also strengthened its influence over Global South countries through grain and fertilizer exports. Russia's influence in the international food market remains significant. According to statistics from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Russia was the world's largest exporter of wheat, accounting for about 18% (32.9 million tons) of global wheat exports in 2021.15 Russia's influence in the fertilizer market is also significant. According to the FAO, Russia accounted for about 17.3% of total fertilizer exports as of 2021, while Belarus accounted for 6.8%. This qualifies them as major suppliers of nitrogen and potassium fertilizers; sanctions have caused a global supply shortage of fertilizer, particularly potash fertilizer.16 Russia had been the world's largest wheat exporter for many years, but its wheat exports marked a sharp decline in 2025. The country is seeking to maintain its wheat exports at a high level by cutting wheat export tariffs to zero and expanding sales channels to Asia.17

Russia exploited its supply dominance as a "diplomatic asset," providing food aid, including supplies of free wheat, and fertilizer discounts to countries in Africa and the Middle East. At the same time, Russia propagated the narrative that food shortages are caused by Western sanctions against it. At the Russia-Africa Summit in St. Petersburg in August 2023, Russian President Vladimir Putin declared, "Lifting sanctions will end hunger," drawing applause from many African leaders in the audience.18

This "food diplomacy" worked as a psychological warfare for Russia to restore its moral legitimacy. The erroneous recognition that "sanctions are exacerbating the humanitarian crisis" spread in a certain section of the international community, undermining the legitimacy of the sanctions regime. As a result, Russia not only avoided economic isolation but also succeeded in winning over many countries in the Global South.19 This represents a new type of geopolitical cooperation based not on traditional military and political alliances but on "economic means" and "psychological empathy."

In this way, Russia's economic retaliation strategy undermines the very norms of the international order without physical destruction. The "weaponization" of energy and food is not a simple suspension of trade but an attempt to dismantle the "rules-based international order." The resulting damage to trust in international organizations is serious. At UN Security Council meetings, Russia repeatedly vetoed the strengthening of sanctions against itself. The World Food Program (WFP) underwent internal divisions over whether to accept Russian fertilizer. Institutional division in the international community was precisely what Russia intended.

As the Ukraine war drags on, sanctions and retaliation, energy and information, food and diplomacy are becoming more intertwined to form the "non-military front lines" of war. Economic sanctions can no longer be defined as a means of deterring military force but must be redefined as part of psychological and information warfare. Hybrid warfare by economic means is an "anti-liberal economic warfare" that exploits the idea of liberal economy, and will likely become a bone of contention in future international security arguments.

Conclusion: Hybrid Warfare and the Defense Line for Democracy

As so far explained, the hybrid warfare launched by Russia in the Ukraine war is not simply a fusion of military and non-military elements, but a strategy that "turns society into a battlefield." It features (1) erasing the boundaries between military, information, the economy, and psychology; (2) embedding adversarial structures in institutions and cognition; and (3) creating a state of endless, constant warfare in terms of time and space. Russia institutionalized this concept through the creation of the SSD in the process of the Ukraine war, transforming the state's means of governance into a war machine as such. Hybrid warfare is making the Ukraine war endless. Even after armed conflict has come to an end, information, economic, and psychological warfare is feared to continue and reignite conflict at any time. Here we see the new normality of modern warfare.

Hybrid warfare poses a serious threat to democracies because their institutional strengths—freedom and transparency—are ironically their greatest vulnerabilities at the same time. Russia's hybrid warfare exploits this "inherent paradox of democracy," undermining trust in institutions from within. Therefore, rather than adopting censorship or information blockades, democracies should improve the media literacy and critical thinking skills of their citizens and strengthen social immunity. In the face of such threats, NATO and the EU have entered the second phase of their efforts to rebuild national and societal resilience (crisis response skills). The first phase (2014–2016) in the wake of Russia's annexation of Crimea focused on cyber defense, information warfare countermeasures, and social defense. The second phase, which is underway, focuses on "comprehensive security" to address health, supply, evacuation, strategic stockpiles, and anti-sabotage measures.20 This approach differs from traditional deterrence based on military alliances; it aims to build deterrence from within society. Defense should be redefined as a comprehensive system that encompasses not only military forces and equipment, but also media, education, cyberspace, and the economy. In an era of hybrid warfare, it may be said that protecting a nation's "information and credibility" has become synonymous with "protecting its territory."

The outcome of the Ukraine war will have profound implications not only for Europe but also for Asia's security. China's pressure on Taiwan, North Korea's cyberattacks and missile tests, and the rise of cognitive warfare and influence operations in the Indo-Pacific region are all examples of regional variants of Russian-style hybrid warfare. Moreover, North Korea received technology from Russia that would otherwise be unobtainable as a reward for participating in the war in Ukraine on the side of the Russian military. Additionally, the North Korean military acquired frontline combat experience in modern warfare. Given those experiences, the threat posed by North Korea will likely increase throughout East Asia.

Russia's recent actions have had the most serious impact on the normative structure of the international community, highlighting the absence of an enforcement system. The UN Security Council has become dysfunctional due to Russia's veto power, and the International Criminal Court (ICC) is not only unable to execute the arrest warrant for President Putin, but has even been sanctioned by the Donald Trump administration. If the Ukraine war ends in a manner favorable to Russia, it will introduce the dangerous principle of "The one who takes first wins" into the international order, leading to a prolonged chain of negative consequences. Countering hybrid warfare requires more than just strategic technology; it also involves ethical challenges, such as ensuring the effectiveness of international law and maintaining fairness. Democratic nations must build a new solidarity to maintain this ethical legitimacy.

In the era of hybrid warfare, the concepts of ‘war' and ‘peace' are no longer mutually exclusive. Information warfare, economic warfare, and psychological warfare persist even in peacetime; interstate competition permeates deep into the fabric of society. Russia's disruptive hybrid warfare has provided an impetus for democratic nations to "redefine their defense efforts."

Whatever end the Ukraine war reaches, the international community will be compelled to reexamine the boundaries of war, the meaning of information, and the value of freedom through this conflict. Facing these questions head-on is the first step toward a "just peace" in the 21st century.

(Yoko Hirose, Professor, Keio University)

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