what is a hybrid war?

Migrants transported by a state to create tensions at the borders of Europe, soldiers without insignia who take possession of a territory without firing a shot, suspicion of interference in a presidential election … These three situations reflect a new type of conflict: hybrid warfare. The unprecedented crisis currently unfolding on the border between Poland and Belarus is one example. Thousands of migrants are currently blocked in front of this gateway to Europe. “We are facing this hybrid, brutal, violent and outrageous attack”, thus declared Charles Michels, President of the European Council.

This is a hybrid attack, because Alexander Lukashenko’s Belarus does not use tanks or weapons, but migrants to await its objective: revenge on European sanctions. Some leaders of the European Union directly accuse Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, of being in the maneuver. This great ally of Lukashenko denies, for his part, any involvement, but for many, Vladimir Putin is the inventor of the hybrid war. In 2014, in Crimea, in the south of Ukraine, armed men, hooded and without insignia, then took possession of the official buildings. Confused, the Ukrainian army had not responded. They were in fact the Russian special forces.