Russia’s New Generation Warfare in Ukraine: Implications for Latvian Defense Policy

One of our students from Finland passed this on. A very timely and informative (and I think potentially very important) report from the Latvia - the National Defence Academy of Latvia and the Center for Security and Strategic Research. The PDF of the report can be downloaded at this link: http://www.naa.mil.lv/~/media/NAA/AZPC/Publikacijas/PP%2002-2014.ashx Note the excerpted figure one below for the assessment of Russia's view of the changing character of armed conflict.  Also of note below that are the eight phases of the new generation of war. I think this is a good analysis of the Russian version of unconventional and political warfare and we should study this so that we can develop the strategy to counter these forms of unconventional warfare and political warfare. Russia’s New Generation Warfare in Ukraine: Implications for Latvian Defense Policy Janis Berzins Introduction Russia considers Ukraine (and Belarus) as part of itself, something that was lost with the collapse of the Soviet Union. As Henry Kissinger put it, in an open editorial in the Washington Post, “to Russia, Ukraine can never be just a foreign country.”1 Moreover, it is considered,together with Belarus, to be a guarantee of Russia's territorial integrity. This is a very sensitive issue. Historically, one of Russia's most important defense strategies is “depth”.2 This explains why it expanded its borders to the West as far as possible. For Russia, it was already difficult to accept the Baltic States becoming NATO members in 2004. Moscow claims the West guaranteed that former Soviet republics and satellites would be left as a neutral buffer zone. True or not, the fact is that nowadays NATO's border is approximately 160 km from St. Petersburg, instead of 1,600 km during the period of the Soviet Union. In the hypothetical case of Ukraine joining NATO, the city of Belgorod that was deep inside the USSR would be on the border. Since for Russia, Ukraine is supposed to be a close ally or, at best, neutral, it considers the involvement of the United States and the European Union in Ukrainian internal affairs to be a direct confrontation to its regional interests. Moscow is rightly convinced that the United States and the European Union were working to attract the Ukraine to their sphere of influence, ignoring Russia's natural right to the region. Russia's goal has always been to make Ukraine a friendly and subordinate partner. For Russia, after the West’s interference, this seems to be further out of reach than ever. Still, notwithstanding the fact that the Russian government is convinced that the West has been financing the Ukrainian opposition and many organizations like NGO’s with the objective of destabilizing the Yanukovitch government, it signed an agreement led by the European Union and mediated by the foreign ministers of Poland, France and Germany, to end the protests on 21st February. The deal included restoring the Ukrainian Constitution as it was between 2004 and 2010 until September, when constitutional reform was expected to be com- pleted; early presidential elections no later than December 2014; an investigation of the government’s violence to be conducted jointly by the opposition government, and the Council of Europe; a veto on declaring a state of emergency; amnesty for protesters arrested since 17th February; surrendering of public buildings occupied by protesters; the confiscation of illegal weapons; new electoral laws to be passed and the establishment of a new Central Election Commission.3    The phases of new-generation war can be schematized as (Tchekinov & Bogdanov, 2013, pp. 15-22): First Phase: non-military asymmetric warfare (encompassing information, moral, psychological, ideological, diplomatic, and economic measures as part of a plan to establish a favorable political, economic, and military setup). Second Phase: special operations to mislead political and military leaders by coordinated measures carried out by diplomatic channels, media, and top government and military agencies by leaking false data, orders, directives, and instructions. Third Phase: intimidation, deceiving, and bribing government and military officers, with the objective of making them abandon their service duties. Fourth Phase: destabilizing propaganda to increase discontent among the population, boosted by the arrival of Russian bands of militants, escalating subversion. Fifth Phase: establishment of no-fly zones over the country to be attacked, imposition of blockades, and extensive use of private military companies in close cooperation with armed opposition units. Sixth Phase: commencement of military action, immediately preceded by large-scale reconnaissance and subversive missions. All types, forms, methods, and forces, including special operations forces, space, radio, radio engineering, electronic, diplomatic, and secret service intelligence, and industrial espionage. Seventh Phase: combination of targeted information operation, electronic warfare operation, aerospace operation, continuous airforce harassment, combined with the use of highprecision weapons launched from various platforms (long-range artillery, and weapons based on new physical principles, including microwaves, radiation, non-lethal biological weapons). Eighth Phase: roll over the remaining points of resistance and destroy surviving enemy units by special operations conducted by reconnaissance units to spot which enemy units have survived and transmit their coordinates to the attacker's missile and artillery units; fire barrages to annihilate the defender's resisting army units by effective advanced weapons; airdrop operations to surround points of resistance; and territory mopping-up operations by ground troops.