This expression has come into wide use quite recently. In 2014, the leaders of Ukraine began to often repeat the phrase "hybrid war" that seemed to them to be biting, thus making it clear that some new, previously unprecedented aggression was being carried out against the "Maidan" and freedom-loving country. So what is it? What facts can confirm that a cunning and complex military operation is being carried out against Kiev?
Macdonald's discovery
Interesting is the opinion of the Irish journalist Brian MacDonald on the topic of hybrid war. He noted the existence of double standards in assessing the quality of information presentation by Western and Russian media. If on British television they show a series that claims to be documentary and tells about the possible invasion of Russian troops in the Baltic and the nuclear bombing of Great Britain, then this is just a hypothesis of the filmmakers. By the way, this TV company is governmental, and therefore the materials broadcast by it can be considered a reflection of the official point of view. But the newsreels of the French Channel Plus are already an element of the "hybrid war" waged by the Kremlin against democratic countries. However, MacDonald did not discover anything new, but simply noticed the obvious, although now in the world,where an increasing percentage of the population can boast of being purely brainwashed, and it's not easy.
What is Hybridity?
This type of war could be called mixed, binary, duplicate, double, or something else, but once, apparently, a long time ago, this term was adopted and approved. Its meaning is that in addition to the usual hostilities conducted by military-technical means (tanks, airplanes, helicopters, cannons, missiles, etc.), there is also an information war. It does not matter at all whether it is true or pure disinformation. While the war is going on, all means are good, the main thing is that there is a result. It is expressed in the fact that as many of the enemy soldiers and ordinary residents of the hostile country as possible cease to believe in the correctness of the actions of their leadership. The science of hybrid warfare is as old as human history itself. Demoralizing the enemy is the first thing, it is a guarantee of victory.
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World War II
It should be remembered that the Stalinist leadership tried to corrupt the Wehrmacht and instill in the German soldiers the idea of surrender only in the second half of the Great Patriotic War. Until 1943, preference was given to traditional means, resources were spent mainly on mobilization measures and the restructuring of the economy on a war footing. British intelligence agencies, for example, have been far more sophisticated, with great emphasis on subversive broadcasts. So, already in 1940, radio stations appeared, broadcasting in German under the guise of Nazi. Their announcers scolded Churchill with might and main, but in between times they reported information that discouraged Hitler's soldiers and officers. Great role in the common cause of victory and the British company "BBC", forcing many enemies to think about the correctness of an aggressive war. But then the art of bringing confusion into the mind had not yet reached the level that more modern masters of the genre can boast of. Still, there were moral principles, ideals of journalistic ethics and general ideas about decency.
The first serious experiments
The eighties became the time of development of the general principles of hybrid warfare, and the Americans distinguished themselves in this matter. It became quite acceptable to accuse the leader of Panama of cannibalism and the use of cocaine in bags, showing the public the contents of his refrigerator. True, later it turned out that the meat was ordinary pork, and the white powder was corn flour, but, as they say, the sediment remained. The substance in a test tube, shown as evidence of Iraqi development of weapons of mass destruction, looked similarly plausible. The general principle was to give the undesirable leader the most beastly appearance in the eyes of the broad masses and get public approval for the next aggression.
Was there a boy?
But it's time to return to Ukraine. In July 2015, Channel One showed in the news material from which it was possible to understand that the Ukrainian military brutally tortured the child. The reportage was not conducted on behalf of journalists, it was an oral story of a refugee from Slavyansk. This partly relieves the TV channel of responsibility for unreliability. The story of the crucified boy turned out to be untrue, and it was admitted. The woman, perhaps, was not in herself from the abundance of experienced emotions and uttered everything that came into her inflamed mind. This happens during the war, and it is scary in itself, even without taking into account the thousands of real people killed. This "crucified boy" is still remembered by the Ukrainian media today, after a year and a half. Moreover, there is a second case.
Was there a girl?
She was, and indeed a minor. Channel One told about her fate on January 16, and again from unverified words, seemingly as eyewitnesses. The girl, according to her parents and outraged neighbors, was kidnapped and raped by migrants from the Middle East, who call themselves refugees. As it turned out later, the “victim” herself tried to mislead everyone, including her relatives and the Berlin investigative authorities, but she did it ineptly, and the idea failed. Channel One apologized for the mistake, announced a later version of events, and that was the end of the case. Germany did not consider this unpleasant incident a manifestation of Russian information aggression and hybrid war, but the Ukrainian media will probably remember this case for a long time.
Again about French cinema
Paul Moreira's film has not yet been caught in a systemic inaccuracy, and even more so in deceit. Another thing is that its informational component can amaze only the Western viewer, the citizens of Ukraine and Russia too, know much more about the events covered in the “Masks of the Revolution” and, unfortunately, not always by hearsay. The novelty is only the fact of expressing a different point of view on the "revolution of dignity", not the one to which everyone in Europe is already accustomed. The result was a long-unprecedented audience interest, which prompted the channel to repeat and third show. But it's time to think about why it so happened that in freedom-loving France, famous for its democratic traditions, for a long time it was possible to instill a one-sided view of events in the country in the minds,located not on Venus or Saturn, but a few hundred kilometers from Paris?
War is on
Not only a day, but even an hour does not pass without another message on Ukrainian television broadcasting about Russian servicemen seen or even killed in Donbass, of whom there are either thousands or tens of thousands. Politico is seriously covering the alleged talks between the Russian president and his Polish counterpart on the imminent partition of Ukraine. Foreign Affairs magazine informs readers of the imminent economic and political collapse of Russia. The German TV channel ZDF pays the Russian for fabrications about his participation in the war in Ukraine. It is possible to enumerate all cases of publication of unverified and frankly false information in the West for a long time, no one apologizes for them, and in case of being caught in untruth, they simply continue in the same spirit. The war is going on, and so far it is informational. It is hoped that it will not grow into a hybrid.