Public Law and Administration under Conditions of Hybrid Warfare (The Experience of Ukraine)

Events that took place in Ukraine in 2014 transparently demonstrated the maladjustment of the national legal and administrative system to the challenges of hybrid warfare in times of peace. Although it took into account the possibility of direct military threats, it proved not to be ready for withstanding unconventional pressure. This state of affairs significantly weakened the state’s ability to resist and led to a number of dramatic political miscalculations, organizational failures, and acute social problems. The subsequent update of the national public law and administrative system made it possible to improve the situation, but at the same time it revealed a number of pressing issues related to the need to strike a balance between the state’s commitment to ensure the protection of human rights and the necessity to protect national security. In this sense the experience of Ukraine is instructive for many countries of the world, especially for those that are the target of the geopolitical ambitions of the modern Russia. The paper discusses the public law of Ukraine in recent years with the view of highlighting some key problems of legal regulation, as well as identifying some promising ways to develop public administration so that it is capable of effectively coping with the threats of hybrid warfare.

The aspects of dehumanization in the condition of hybrid war: on the example of attitudes the citizens of Ukraine to Russian soldiers – participants of the Russian-Ukrainian war

The article examines the features of dehumanization of Russian soldiers participating in the Russian-Ukrainian war in the perception of different groups of the population. Dehumanization is seen as a mechanism for denying human characteristics to individuals or groups of people, helping to justify violence, which is a necessary attribute of war. Against the background of the long Russian-Ukrainian war, it was possible to predict that the citizens of Ukraine would have blatant dehumanization of the enemy. However, one of the features of the hybrid war and in particular the information component in it is the blurring and weak personification of the image of the enemy, which is often labeled as an invading state. The aim of the article was to find out whether and how the mechanism of dehumanization works in these conditions. Achieving the goal required a clear personification of the object of dehumanization. The Russian military was chosen as such as the direct participants in the conflict, representing the attacking state. A qualitative method of pseudo-experimental research and in-depth interviews were chosen to identify the level and form of dehumanization. The experimental group was made up of internally displaced persons from the East, who represented the category of the population most affected by the actions of the Russian military due to the destruction of their homes, the loss of relatives or friends, and so on. The reference group was formed of people who were not directly injured during the war. To analyze the dehumanization of the Russian military, a scale of dehumanization has been developed, with blatant dehumanization at one extreme and subtle unconscious dehumanization at the other. It turned out that both in the experimental and in the reference group there was almost no blatant dehumanization, which may be due to the peculiarities of hybrid warfare, in particular the blurring of ideas about how the war is fought and who the enemy is. Instead, subtle forms of dehumanization, such as robotization and heroism, prevailed, confirming the influence of propaganda, which is one of the most important components of hybrid warfare. At the same time, in both groups, after the intervention, there was a shift from subtle forms of dehumanization to more blatant.

Building NATO Collective Defence Capabilities in Northeastern Europe I

The basis of NATO’s existence is the collective defence of Allies, its population and borders. Assurance and deterrence measures and activities implemented in Northeast Europe aim to build NATO’s common defence potential and deter potential aggression against NATO members. Assurance activities began in 2014, defined at the NATO Summit in Wales. They respond to the changed security situation on NATO’s eastern borders with Russian activities, the illegal annexation of Crimea, destabilisation activities and military involvement in eastern Ukraine. Increasing military activities and concentration of Russian military forces near NATO’s eastern borders, accompanied by hybrid warfare activities against the Northeastern European NATO members, followed. After the NATO Summits in Warsaw (2016) and Brussels (2018), NATO assurance and deterrence measures have been launched as a response to perceived threat. They aim to strengthen the Eastern Allies’ defence and deter and prevent any potential aggression while building Allied collective defence capabilities.

FROM SUN TZU TO MODERN SECRET WARS: GENESIS OF THE HYBRID WARFARE ARSENAL

Вєдєнєєв Д. В., Семенюк О. Г. Формування концептуальних та функціональних передумов гібридної конфліктності як загрози національній безпеці України: ретроспективний аналіз: монографія. Київ : ДП «ІНФОТЕХ», 2020. 274 с.