Economist Article Analyzes Russia's Hybrid Warfare

The Economist’s Worldif.com has released an article concerning Russia’s aggression in Ukraine claiming that the developments have given NATO both a new sense of purpose and a new kind of threat: “hybrid” warfare. “The alliance’s military analysts have been working on “detailed, granular” but secret plans for a range of crisis scenarios,” the article says.

According to the analysis, the overarching assumption is that Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, encouraged by the success of annexing Crimea and prizing away Ukraine’s Donbass region, is moving on to something even more ambitious. “His goal: to undermine NATO and the European Union, by concentrating his well-honed techniques of hybrid warfare on two Baltic states that share a land border with Russia—Latvia and Estonia."

The article also discusses different facets of security including hybrid warfare, which “brings together military and non-military instruments to discombobulate the target state.” “Unlike Ukraine, the Baltic states are members of both the EU and NATO and are covered by the military alliance’s commitment to collective security under Article 5 of the 1949 Washington treaty that deems an attack on one as an attack on all," states the piece.

To read more about the expert regional analysis and how Georgia may be affected, read Georgia Today’s Zviad Adzinbaia in this Friday’s issue.