Agreed, nothing hybrid in what Russia is doing today, in the same way the Skripals and Litvinenko were not hybrid attacks — but calling them hybrid showed Russia can get away with it, at least in the UK.
Out of curiosity, why the Baltics are next on the chopping board? Appreciate they’ve been on high alert for years now, with risks intensifying this year, but the article sounds more certain than just “risks”.
1. They have significant Russian-speaking minorities that could give Putin a pretext for “protecting fellow Russians from oppression”.
2. They are small enough and far enough from most NATO capitals where politicians, especially Trump-aligned American ones, will seriously question if they really want to go to war with Russia over them.
I could see a scenario where the Russians invade the Baltics and stop when they hit significant NATO resistance, then dare NATO to try to push them back to Russia. Effectively a bite-and-hold. Does NATO have the stomach for that? I don’t know.
This analysis raises fundamental questions that political leaders rarely discuss. Labels can obscure basic concepts, and “hybrid warfare” is a case in point. Turning the noun “warfare” into a qualified compound can be a subtle way of reframing what is actually happening; hybrid warfare is still warfare, and the analytical focus belongs on the aggressor’s objectives, not on the particular means employed.[1]
Such an inquiry invites a return to the classics of conflict. Carl von Clausewitz’s On War is full of pithy formulations, the best known holding that war is nothing more than the continuation of policy by other means.[2] Niccolò Machiavelli is increasingly relevant as well; The Prince is often read as a tactical manual, but its deeper implications concern how ruling elites acquire and hold a state for their own benefit.[3]
This inquiry also requires thinking carefully about collective nouns—states, countries, and other polities, along with their subdivisions. When someone says that “Russia is at war with NATO,” what does that actually mean, and who is truly exercising power? The Russian phrase кто кого (“who [does what to] whom”) is instructive here. Coined by Lenin around 1921 and later invoked by Stalin, it framed politics as a zero-sum struggle for dominance in which compromise has no place—only victory or defeat.[4]
The phrase has since become shorthand in Russian and post-Soviet political vocabulary for any high-stakes contest, from business rivalries to geopolitical confrontations, in which one side is understood to dominate and the other to be dominated.
This question of who is truly acting matters when we ask who is really “at war with Ukraine.” To say that Hitler invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, or the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, is a useful shorthand: Hitler gave the orders, but a long chain of command carried them out. The same framing is relevant to the U.S. strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities in June 2025.[5]
It applies equally to the U.S. military operation that culminated in the capture of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro in January 2026—each operation ordered by one man but executed by thousands.[6]
Unfortunately, too much attention goes to conventional forms of conflict and too little to the subtler business of seizing control of another state, beginning with Russia’s long effort to install a friendly government in Kyiv.[7] The same underlying logic runs through Russia’s hybrid campaigns against the Baltic states, Poland, Denmark, and Germany, where an explosive-laden drone was found near a NATO airlift hub at Leipzig in August 2026.[8]
Russia has also worked to keep compliant regimes in power in Belarus and, until Viktor Orbán’s decisive electoral defeat by Péter Magyar’s TISZA party in April 2026, in Hungary as well.[9]
Nor should the Kremlin’s intelligence services be underestimated further west. British investigators examined whether Russian-linked money reached Arron Banks, the insurance magnate who bankrolled Nigel Farage’s Leave.EU campaign during the 2016 Brexit referendum—a pattern of Kremlin-aligned financing and messaging that critics argue persists in Farage’s Reform UK today.[10] U.S. intelligence agencies likewise concluded that Moscow ran an influence campaign intended to help Donald Trump’s electoral prospects in 2016.[11]
The law of armed conflict is only a piece of the puzzle. As the Tallinn Manual 2.0 on the International Law Applicable to Cyber Operations makes clear, cyber and other hybrid tools do not occur in a legal vacuum—but the 154 rules it sets out mainly extend existing international law to cyberspace rather than supply a comprehensive framework for hybrid conflict as a whole.[12]
“The past is the present, isn’t it? It’s the future, too.”
8. Congressional Research Service, “Russian Hybrid Warfare Activities in Europe: Considerations for Congress,” R49134, https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R49134; Ethan S. Burger, “‘We Will Win Because We Are the Strongest’: A 1939 Poster and Europe’s Present Reckoning with Russia,” Substack, Aug. 27, 2026 (discussing the August 2026 Leipzig Airport drone incident and the pattern of Russian hybrid incursions into Poland, Denmark, and the Baltic states), https://ethansburger.substack.com/p/we-will-win-because-we-are-the-strongest
It’s war, and it is in Europe, but four and half years haven’t made us face reality. Russia is very comfortable in that liminal space while Russia primes European political actors to do the rest of the job for them when they get voted in. You cannot make it up, really.
The most important question may not be whether Russia is “at war with the West,” but what kind of war we are actually witnessing.
From a strategic and field perspective, the distinction between conventional war, hybrid conflict, political warfare, economic pressure, information operations, and long-term strategic competition matters greatly. Russia’s confrontation with the West cannot be understood only through the battlefield in Ukraine. At the same time, describing the entire confrontation as a single, unified war risks overlooking the different interests, calculations, and thresholds of Russia, the United States, NATO members, and other regional actors.
The deeper issue is the erosion of the post-Cold War security architecture. Ukraine is the most visible battlefield, but the strategic contest is much broader: deterrence, military adaptation, industrial capacity, energy security, alliances, technology, information, and ultimately the ability of states to sustain political cohesion under prolonged pressure.
The West therefore should not think only in terms of “winning” against Russia. It also needs a credible long-term strategy for preventing escalation, maintaining allied cohesion, rebuilding deterrence, and eventually creating a security order in which competition does not automatically become permanent war.
History shows that wars are often easier to enter than to end. Strategic success is therefore not simply the ability to defeat an adversary, but the ability to shape the political conditions that follow the conflict.
— Wahidullah Noorzai
Former Senior ANCOP/ANP Officer | Strategic and Security Analyst
As long as the war continues as it now has for more than 4 years, the west helps the Ukraine reluctantly, most likely because Trump does not want to support the West. If, I repeat IF, Russia wins, and occupies the entire Ukraine, then what will happen?
The answer is nothing will happen. The West will just shrug its shoulders, as it did in 2014 when the Ukrain lost the Krimea, and think "shit happens". There should be a strong, unmistakable and definite sign of military solidarity from the West including the USA. - Poor Ukrainians!
(If) Trump is a Russian asset. Its benefits Putin to keep trump in power.
In the lead up to the midterms, Putin invades one of the Baltics, and article 5 is enacted.
US congress declares war and delays the mid terms.
NATO collectively support the Baltics but don’t drive Russia back on the escalation fear.
Stalemate in Europe and an unhinged Trump still in power. Win win for Russia while the rest of the world pays the price with an out of control global economy.
Russia used to look bad. Right now it would be hard to argue that Trump is not an antichrist. The kind of thing that keeps P. Theil up at night. 'Am I , arn't I'
"hybrid warfare" according to " the russian Garisimov doctrine" is when you attack militarily and also psychologically, in order to weaken your enemies society, from within.
( its a two-pronged approach)
What russia has been doing are Kinetic physical terrorist attacks
along side with a very elaborate and succesful online hybrid attack, via social media
which seeks to divide, and to weaken western society, from within.
( Divide, to conquer).
The soviet union was also masterful at the psychologic approach - for example by having the kgb financialy support the US civil rights movement... Yet the russian establishment has repeatedly said its the psychological war technique which mostly the west uses on russia, to undermine russia... ( & there is some truth to that - for one example the CIA paid to promote abstract color field painters ( like rothko) to help promote "western artistic supremacy".
Not to mention "Radio free europe"
( in 1965 I went to moscow with us government officials who despite instructions left copies of life magazine lying around).
Today We know that russia online factories have set up protests, where they coaxed people from the left and right to confront each other violently.
I think we actualy should found more western hybrid war... to convince average russians that putin is a crazed corrupt old man, who is going to cost them deeply, by killing their cousins in Ukraine.
And there’s this now: “The Far Right AfD Just Won 44% in Germany
. . . AfD [Alternative fūr Deutchland) wants Germany to end its support for Ukraine and rebuild its relationship with Russia. MAGA has an affinity for Putin but isn’t quite there yet on the issue of fully aligning with Putin’s Russia. AfD is.”
Are the deaths hybrid deaths? Are the lost limbs hybrid amputation? Does putin have a hybrid brain? Are the jet engine drones hybrid drones?
Agreed, nothing hybrid in what Russia is doing today, in the same way the Skripals and Litvinenko were not hybrid attacks — but calling them hybrid showed Russia can get away with it, at least in the UK.
Out of curiosity, why the Baltics are next on the chopping board? Appreciate they’ve been on high alert for years now, with risks intensifying this year, but the article sounds more certain than just “risks”.
1. They have significant Russian-speaking minorities that could give Putin a pretext for “protecting fellow Russians from oppression”.
2. They are small enough and far enough from most NATO capitals where politicians, especially Trump-aligned American ones, will seriously question if they really want to go to war with Russia over them.
I could see a scenario where the Russians invade the Baltics and stop when they hit significant NATO resistance, then dare NATO to try to push them back to Russia. Effectively a bite-and-hold. Does NATO have the stomach for that? I don’t know.
Kто кого?
Labels, Agency, and the Puzzle of Hybrid Conflict
Ethan S. Burger
This analysis raises fundamental questions that political leaders rarely discuss. Labels can obscure basic concepts, and “hybrid warfare” is a case in point. Turning the noun “warfare” into a qualified compound can be a subtle way of reframing what is actually happening; hybrid warfare is still warfare, and the analytical focus belongs on the aggressor’s objectives, not on the particular means employed.[1]
Such an inquiry invites a return to the classics of conflict. Carl von Clausewitz’s On War is full of pithy formulations, the best known holding that war is nothing more than the continuation of policy by other means.[2] Niccolò Machiavelli is increasingly relevant as well; The Prince is often read as a tactical manual, but its deeper implications concern how ruling elites acquire and hold a state for their own benefit.[3]
This inquiry also requires thinking carefully about collective nouns—states, countries, and other polities, along with their subdivisions. When someone says that “Russia is at war with NATO,” what does that actually mean, and who is truly exercising power? The Russian phrase кто кого (“who [does what to] whom”) is instructive here. Coined by Lenin around 1921 and later invoked by Stalin, it framed politics as a zero-sum struggle for dominance in which compromise has no place—only victory or defeat.[4]
The phrase has since become shorthand in Russian and post-Soviet political vocabulary for any high-stakes contest, from business rivalries to geopolitical confrontations, in which one side is understood to dominate and the other to be dominated.
This question of who is truly acting matters when we ask who is really “at war with Ukraine.” To say that Hitler invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, or the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, is a useful shorthand: Hitler gave the orders, but a long chain of command carried them out. The same framing is relevant to the U.S. strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities in June 2025.[5]
It applies equally to the U.S. military operation that culminated in the capture of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro in January 2026—each operation ordered by one man but executed by thousands.[6]
Unfortunately, too much attention goes to conventional forms of conflict and too little to the subtler business of seizing control of another state, beginning with Russia’s long effort to install a friendly government in Kyiv.[7] The same underlying logic runs through Russia’s hybrid campaigns against the Baltic states, Poland, Denmark, and Germany, where an explosive-laden drone was found near a NATO airlift hub at Leipzig in August 2026.[8]
Russia has also worked to keep compliant regimes in power in Belarus and, until Viktor Orbán’s decisive electoral defeat by Péter Magyar’s TISZA party in April 2026, in Hungary as well.[9]
Nor should the Kremlin’s intelligence services be underestimated further west. British investigators examined whether Russian-linked money reached Arron Banks, the insurance magnate who bankrolled Nigel Farage’s Leave.EU campaign during the 2016 Brexit referendum—a pattern of Kremlin-aligned financing and messaging that critics argue persists in Farage’s Reform UK today.[10] U.S. intelligence agencies likewise concluded that Moscow ran an influence campaign intended to help Donald Trump’s electoral prospects in 2016.[11]
The law of armed conflict is only a piece of the puzzle. As the Tallinn Manual 2.0 on the International Law Applicable to Cyber Operations makes clear, cyber and other hybrid tools do not occur in a legal vacuum—but the 154 rules it sets out mainly extend existing international law to cyberspace rather than supply a comprehensive framework for hybrid conflict as a whole.[12]
“The past is the present, isn’t it? It’s the future, too.”
Substack: https://ethansburger.substack.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ethansb
Endnotes
1. See, e.g., Labelling Hybrid Warfare: The “Gerasimov Doctrine” in Think Tank Discourse (discussing how the “hybrid warfare”/“Gerasimov Doctrine” label functions in policy debate), https://www.academia.edu/44424163/Labelling_Hybrid_Warfare_The_Gerasimov_Doctrine_in_Think_Tank_Discourse
2. Carl von Clausewitz, On War (1832), trans. Col. J.J. Graham, Project Gutenberg eBook #1946, https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1946
3. Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince (1532), Project Gutenberg eBook #1232, https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1232
4. “Who, whom?,” Wikipedia (describing Lenin’s 1921 formulation of kto–kogo and Stalin’s 1929 invocation of it), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who,_whom%3F
5. Congressional Research Service, “U.S. Strikes on Nuclear Sites in Iran,” IN12571 (June 23, 2025), https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/IN12571
6. Congressional Research Service, “U.S. Capture of Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro: Considerations for Congress,” IN12618 (updated Jan. 12, 2026), https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/IN12618
7. Ethan S. Burger, “Webinar: Foreign Threats to the US Federal Elections,” The Institute of World Politics, Cyber Intelligence Initiative (Apr. 16, 2021) (situating Russian, Chinese, and Iranian election interference within the longer historical pattern of states seeking to install “friendly governments” abroad), https://www.iwp.edu/events/webinar-foreign-threats-to-the-us-federal-elections/; video recording, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfZaI3qtqDo
8. Congressional Research Service, “Russian Hybrid Warfare Activities in Europe: Considerations for Congress,” R49134, https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R49134; Ethan S. Burger, “‘We Will Win Because We Are the Strongest’: A 1939 Poster and Europe’s Present Reckoning with Russia,” Substack, Aug. 27, 2026 (discussing the August 2026 Leipzig Airport drone incident and the pattern of Russian hybrid incursions into Poland, Denmark, and the Baltic states), https://ethansburger.substack.com/p/we-will-win-because-we-are-the-strongest
9. Ethan S. Burger, “Has Viktor Orbán’s Decisive Electoral Defeat in Hungary So Alarmed Mr. Lukashenko and His Supreme Court into a Misguided Self-Destructive Overreaction?,” Substack, Apr. 2026, https://ethansburger.substack.com/p/has-victor-orbans-decisive-electoral
10. “Arron Banks: Brexit Billionaire Under Criminal Investigation,” Time, Nov. 2, 2018, https://time.com/5441735/arron-banks-brexit-national-crime-agency/; “The Banks Files: How Brexit ‘Bad Boy’ Arron Banks Was Eyeing a Massive Russian Gold Deal,” Channel 4 News, https://www.channel4.com/news/the-banks-files-how-brexit-bad-boy-arron-banks-was-eyeing-a-massive-russian-gold-deal; Ethan S. Burger, “The Kremlin’s Fingerprints on Reform’s Rise,” Substack, May 2026, https://ethansburger.substack.com/p/the-kremlins-fingerprints-on-reforms
11. Office of the Director of National Intelligence, “Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections,” ICA 2017-01D (Jan. 6, 2017), https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/2017/01/06/publications-assessing-russian-activities-and-intentions-recent-us-elections/
12. Michael N. Schmitt (ed.), Tallinn Manual 2.0 on the International Law Applicable to Cyber Operations (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2d ed. 2017); NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence, “International Law Applies to Cyber Operations, Tallinn Manual 2.0 Reaffirms,” https://ccdcoe.org/news/2017/international-law-applies-to-cyber-operations-tallinn-manual-2-0-reaffirms/
It’s war, and it is in Europe, but four and half years haven’t made us face reality. Russia is very comfortable in that liminal space while Russia primes European political actors to do the rest of the job for them when they get voted in. You cannot make it up, really.
The most important question may not be whether Russia is “at war with the West,” but what kind of war we are actually witnessing.
From a strategic and field perspective, the distinction between conventional war, hybrid conflict, political warfare, economic pressure, information operations, and long-term strategic competition matters greatly. Russia’s confrontation with the West cannot be understood only through the battlefield in Ukraine. At the same time, describing the entire confrontation as a single, unified war risks overlooking the different interests, calculations, and thresholds of Russia, the United States, NATO members, and other regional actors.
The deeper issue is the erosion of the post-Cold War security architecture. Ukraine is the most visible battlefield, but the strategic contest is much broader: deterrence, military adaptation, industrial capacity, energy security, alliances, technology, information, and ultimately the ability of states to sustain political cohesion under prolonged pressure.
The West therefore should not think only in terms of “winning” against Russia. It also needs a credible long-term strategy for preventing escalation, maintaining allied cohesion, rebuilding deterrence, and eventually creating a security order in which competition does not automatically become permanent war.
History shows that wars are often easier to enter than to end. Strategic success is therefore not simply the ability to defeat an adversary, but the ability to shape the political conditions that follow the conflict.
— Wahidullah Noorzai
Former Senior ANCOP/ANP Officer | Strategic and Security Analyst
It's time to takeout the three stooges …..hand em to the Hague, then hang em high …..P N and T
As long as the war continues as it now has for more than 4 years, the west helps the Ukraine reluctantly, most likely because Trump does not want to support the West. If, I repeat IF, Russia wins, and occupies the entire Ukraine, then what will happen?
The answer is nothing will happen. The West will just shrug its shoulders, as it did in 2014 when the Ukrain lost the Krimea, and think "shit happens". There should be a strong, unmistakable and definite sign of military solidarity from the West including the USA. - Poor Ukrainians!
The US only offers largesse to Israel and we are out of meaningful ammunitions.
Putin speaks hybrid Russian. He hits hybrid Germany. He has a purely evil soul.
(If) Trump is a Russian asset. Its benefits Putin to keep trump in power.
In the lead up to the midterms, Putin invades one of the Baltics, and article 5 is enacted.
US congress declares war and delays the mid terms.
NATO collectively support the Baltics but don’t drive Russia back on the escalation fear.
Stalemate in Europe and an unhinged Trump still in power. Win win for Russia while the rest of the world pays the price with an out of control global economy.
Russia used to look bad. Right now it would be hard to argue that Trump is not an antichrist. The kind of thing that keeps P. Theil up at night. 'Am I , arn't I'
"hybrid warfare" according to " the russian Garisimov doctrine" is when you attack militarily and also psychologically, in order to weaken your enemies society, from within.
( its a two-pronged approach)
What russia has been doing are Kinetic physical terrorist attacks
along side with a very elaborate and succesful online hybrid attack, via social media
which seeks to divide, and to weaken western society, from within.
( Divide, to conquer).
The soviet union was also masterful at the psychologic approach - for example by having the kgb financialy support the US civil rights movement... Yet the russian establishment has repeatedly said its the psychological war technique which mostly the west uses on russia, to undermine russia... ( & there is some truth to that - for one example the CIA paid to promote abstract color field painters ( like rothko) to help promote "western artistic supremacy".
Not to mention "Radio free europe"
( in 1965 I went to moscow with us government officials who despite instructions left copies of life magazine lying around).
Today We know that russia online factories have set up protests, where they coaxed people from the left and right to confront each other violently.
I think we actualy should found more western hybrid war... to convince average russians that putin is a crazed corrupt old man, who is going to cost them deeply, by killing their cousins in Ukraine.
among many other problems...
a
And there’s this now: “The Far Right AfD Just Won 44% in Germany
. . . AfD [Alternative fūr Deutchland) wants Germany to end its support for Ukraine and rebuild its relationship with Russia. MAGA has an affinity for Putin but isn’t quite there yet on the issue of fully aligning with Putin’s Russia. AfD is.”
https://michaeldsellers.substack.com/p/the-far-right-afd-just-won-44-in?r=200yh4&utm_medium=ios
I believe it's a racial slur to say, "call a spade a spade."
Agreed. If not for Ukraine, Putin would already be somewhere else, probably the Baltic states.
Slava Ukraini!!! 🇺🇦💪🏼🇺🇦💪🏼🇺🇦