Den Haag October 2016
Russia s view of modern conflict: Info Phase Zero 2
New Generation Warfare (& Peace)? The entry for Information war...makes a clear distinction between the Russian definition all-encompassing, and not limited to wartime and the Western one limited, tactical Info Ops carried out during hostilities. Keir Giles, Chatham House, 2016 The role of non-military means of achieving political and strategic goals has grown, and, in many cases, they have exceeded the power of force of weapons in their effectiveness.including carrying out actions of informational conflict. General Valery Gerasimov, Russian Chief of the General Staff...before we had some kind of idea that it was either peace or war. But now more and more countries are living in a state which is somewhere in between. And that is about this blurring line between war and peace...we have to do things differently. We have a new playbook for NATO. It s not going to look like it did during the Cold War days, but still has to stand strong for common defense. NATO SG, Jens Stoltenberg, January 2016
Russian New Generation Warfare: Military debate Military Thought (Russian journal of military thinking): Months before the start of a New Generation War, large scale measures in all types of warfare information, moral, psychological, ideological, diplomatic, economic and so on may be designed and followed under a joint plan. Powerful information pressure (in the form of InfoOps) will be applied through all media on the population of the country to be attacked militarily, and on the public in the rest of the world. Formerly fought in a 3D environment, armed struggle has expanded from the ground, sea, and air into an entirely new environment information. ------------------------------- Reflexive control: Conflict is between the decision-making processes of the opponents Maskirovka: Strategic maskirovka is carried out at national and theatre levels to mislead the enemy as to political and military capabilities
Strategic Narrative: History is an unending dialogue between the present and the past. (EH Carr) Kiev is the mother of Russian cities. Ancient Rus is our common source and we cannot live without each other. President Putin Justifying Russian action Historical narrative Multiple narratives Tricks & techniques Operationalising the Information Campaign: Deception, denial confusing, obscuring Narrative supports strategy Fascism/WW2/ Russkiy Mir A narrative for every audience Mirroring, framing, priming High tempo & info smokescreen to get inside decision-making cycle and introduce uncertainty and delay 5
Operationalising the information campaign: Delay, deceive, confuse old ideas, modern means The destruction of MH17 A Ukrainian fighter jet shot it down. (Official) A Ukrainian Buk shot it down. (Official) Ukraine was trying to kill Putin The bodies were unfresh MH17 was really MH370 The CIA did it...and so on
President Putin speaks. March 2014 Russian President Vladimir Putin said Tuesday that his country has not deployed any troops in Crimea recently and has no plans to annex the peninsula. When asked about the identity of troops without insignias, Putin told a press conference that they are local militias. March 2015 I told all my colleagues, there were four of them, that the situation in Ukraine has forced us to start working on returning Crimea to Russia. Putin says in the film, recounting a late-night meeting with his security chiefs in late February 2014. ------------------------------------------------- June 2014 There are no armed forces, no Russian instructors in Ukraine and there never were any. (President Putin) December 2015 We never said there were no people there including in the military sphere (President Putin)
Question More (although not in Russia!) There is no objectivity only approximations of the truth by as many different voices as possible. Margarita Simonyan, RT editor-in-chief The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for who the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists. Hannah Arendt