Exploiting Ethnicity in Russian Hybrid Threats

Abstract

Recently, the term ‘hybrid warfare’ has been applied to a set of levers by which some actors in international relations attempt to achieve their foreign policy objectives. One of the levers Russia employs in their use of hybrid warfare is to exploit ethnic cleavages in targeted societies. In former Soviet Republics, Russian uses propaganda to reach out to ethnic Russians populations (or Russian speakers) in those countries. In other countries, Russia cynically exploits ethnic cleavages simply to cause problems in targeted countries, such as Arab immigrants in western Europe or Catalonians in Spain. This paper explores the nature of Russia’s attempts to exploit ethnic cleavages and how western government should address them

Keywords

• russia, hybrid warfare, ethnicity, propaganda, conflict, legitimacy, subversion