Hybrid Threats - a New Challenge or a Bogey of Post-democracy? (Western Discourse)

As the Russian-Ukrainian conflict developed after the events of 2014, and especially with the start of a “special military operation” in Ukraine, Russia in the political mass media of the countries of the West received the status of the main source of hybrid threats. The vagueness of the terms “hybrid threat” and “hybrid war” for the majority of the population made this accusation even more ominous and causing panic in front of everything associated with Russia. At the same time, historically, these phenomena, or rather, political constructs, have nothing to do with these events and were generated by the military-political thought of the United States a quarter of a century before them. However, realizing that in this new geostrategic situation, constructs that are beginning to leave the political topic are quite convenient for the purposes of information confrontation, a number of Western countries began to use them to interpret any actions of Russia that contradict the interests of the United States and NATO, and at the same time for the generality of other "non-democratic" countries. Calls appeared in official documents to inform people about the existence of “hybrid threats” and how to deal with them, to develop a common knowledge-based response. The article concludes that at present, in such appeals, the component is more likely to be propagandistic than anticipating a threat.