Russia’s new tactics of war
shouldn’t fool anyone
By Editorial Board
After an inconclusive summit with Ukrainian leader Petro Poroshenko this week in Minsk, Belarus, Russian President Vladimir Putin declared that Moscow would do “everything” it could to encourage a peace plan for eastern Ukraine and “create an atmosphere of trust.” But within hours of uttering those words, a new front in the conflict opened at the port of Novoazovsk, where Russia appeared to be backing a stealthy but concerted invasion with tanks and artillery, a counteroffensive to help Russia’s besieged separatist fighters near Donetsk.
This is “trust”?
Mr. Putin’s blithe denials that Russia is supporting separatists in Ukraine are already stale. When he says “this is not our business,” as he did in Minsk, he is lying. But the bald untruths and military thrusts into eastern Ukraine provide a revealing glimpse of Russia’s new approach to throwing its weight around. Mr. Putin is engaged in subversion and feint, perhaps not surprising for a onetime lieutenant colonel in the Soviet KGB.
Some have called the new approach “hybrid war,” a conflict waged by commandos without insignia, armored columns slipping across the international border at night, volleys of misleading propaganda, floods of disinformation and sneaky invasions like the one into Crimea. In this hybrid war, a civilian airliner was shot down by surface-to-air missiles, but the triggerman or supplier of the missile was never identified; artillery shells are fired but no one can say from where; Russian military material and equipment appears suddenly in the villages and fields of eastern Ukraine. While people are being killed, as in any war, and while Ukraine has mustered its forces admirably to push back, this hybrid war features an aggressor whose moves are shrouded in deception.
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