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Overflights of military bases, massive disinformation campaigns, interference in elections: in recent years, the number of destabilisation manoeuvres has multiplied. These actions are part of a wider strategy of influence whose name has been widely popularised since the start of the war in Ukraine: hybrid warfare. What is it really about? By whom and by what means is it being waged? What are its real objectives?
Three specialists provide their answers to these questions, focusing on information warfare: Major General Air (in 2e section) Jean-Marc Vigilant, former director of the École de guerre and associate researcher at IRIS, Maxime Audinet, who holds the «Strategies of Influence» chair at INALCO and is a researcher specialising in information warfare and Russian foreign policy. former intelligence services executive, whose former profession requests anonymity.
It is difficult to define hybrid warfare precisely, given the vagueness of the concept and the ambiguity of its constituent fields. However, all the definitions agree on some common characteristics:
- The combination of hostile activities carried out in conventional (land, sea and air) and unconventional environments, which therefore do not correspond to the traditional norms of warfare.
- These activities take place in both physical fields (the seabed and exo-atmospheric space) and immaterial fields (the economy, cyber, energy and information).
- They seek to destabilise one or more societies while remaining below the threshold of conflict, i.e. so as not to lead to open warfare.
Between subversion and disinformation: Europe under pressure
Since the Russian aggression against Ukraine in 2022 and even before, European states have experienced a significant increase in hybrid interference. Since 2021, more than 160 pro-Russian destabilisation actions have been recorded on continental soil, including around fifty in France alone.
The CASSINI geopolitical analysis firm, the GEODE laboratory, the Institut Français de Géopolitique and the CORUSCANT collective have produced an interactive map listing all acts of destabilisation committed in the European Union since 2021.
Not only are these manoeuvres designed to destabilise, but they are part of a wider strategy of informational influence, as the former French services executive explains:
«Clandestine destabilisation operations are among the toughest hybrid actions, designed to prepare the informational battlefield, in particular by seeking to instil fear in the population and paralyse leaders, before moving on to the war phase».»
Three examples of subversion, amplified and connected by disinformation, clearly show how this destabilising strategy is articulated by superimposing different fields of action:
- At the end of October 2023, hundreds of Stars of David were discovered in the streets of Paris. Initially regarded as an appeal to hatred, the act was later reclassified as a subversive operation and attributed by the Quai d'Orsay to Russian intelligence services.
- In May 2024, red hands were stenciled on the Wall of the Righteous at the Shoah Memorial in Paris.
- In June 2024, five coffins covered with a banner reading «French soldiers from Ukraine» were discovered at the foot of the Eiffel Tower.
According to researcher Maxime Audinet, the "tagged stars" operation was a success for Russia, highlighting the social divisions present in French society:
«A whole series of media, including 24-hour news channels, in particular CNews and BFM TV, gave massive coverage to this affair even before we knew who was behind it, seeing it as an illustration of a resurgence of anti-Semitism within the Muslim community in France. Hundreds of thousands of viewers were exposed to this story. Before it was authenticated as interference, this act had already fulfilled its primary function: to aggravate divisions».»
These tensions are then widely exploited, in particular through what are known as troll factories, sources of fake accounts on social networks that deliberately create online conflicts around extremely divisive subjects, such as Israel and Palestine.
Apart from simply exacerbating the social climate, this polarisation is also aimed at paralysing the government. According to the former services executive, the strategy behind these operations is above all political:
«This polarisation reduces the room for manoeuvre of the leaders in power, who are opposed to Russia's plan to reconstitute its empire and, beyond that, its zone of influence. In France, as in other countries, the political extremes are growing stronger and showing themselves to be permeable to Russian influence. Even if they don't come to power, their weight is already having a significant impact on the freedom of decision of the highest political leaders, and can create chaos and distraction».»
Polarisation influences the electoral strategy of political parties, which are ultimately forced to position themselves on an issue, at the risk of losing part of their electorate. This logic is growing and impacting on political debate on a wide variety of increasingly divisive issues, with repercussions for the room for manoeuvre of the government in power. Certain issues, such as support for Ukraine, are now taking a back seat.
Weapons for resistance: the challenge of resilience
If the modes of conflict are evolving, so too are the instruments of response and resilience. Several tools exist, at European, national and individual level. Numerous initiatives have been launched at European level. The former services executive, who worked specifically on these issues when he was posted to Brussels, explains their origins and outlines:
«At the end of 2015, the European Hybrid Threat Cell (EU Hybrid Fusion Cell) was set up following Russia's annexation of Crimea. It is a structure dedicated to the analysis and creation of a common knowledge base for European intelligence services in the face of hybrid threats. Two other serious, high-level contributions were the EU Disinformation Task Force, The Helsinki Centre of Excellence, a centre for the analysis of hybrid strategies and the development of resilience tools.»
The former services executive is calling for this type of initiative to be stepped up, which could go as far as setting up a permanent secretariat and liaison officers« office »in support of the Commission which, in view of its remit, is playing a growing role in terms of resilience and the protection of critical infrastructures«. But this requires a »paradigm shift«: »Nothing will happen without a Copernican revolution in terms of security culture and rules within the institutions".»
At national level, the question of the political attribution of subversion operations is the subject of debate. Some specialists see it as an opportunity to strongly condemn an act of violation of sovereignty and destabilisation, while others consider that it is merely a trap, that of playing into the hands of the aggressor, by presenting him as stronger than he really is.
For Maxime Audinet, this decision must be taken on a case-by-case basis, but the effects of attribution are often effective, not only in countering Russian interference but also in reassuring the victim population:
«In a case like that of the Stars of David, attribution is fundamental, because it makes it possible to re-establish the facts, calm the public debate and restore responsibility, by showing that there was a malicious actor, in this case a Russian intelligence service. On the other hand, there are cases where attribution is difficult, because of the ambiguity of the practices of the actual perpetrators and the opacity of the chain of command. And sometimes attribution can give too much visibility to an operation that would not otherwise have had any.»
The former services executive advocates more drastic solutions, although direct or allusive attribution is already an effective tool. Witness the arrests in early 2024 in Germany of a parliamentary assistant to the far-right AfD party and three other German nationals on suspicion of spying for China:
«Once a certain stage has been reached, we will have to stop «playing footsie» with an increasingly uninhibited enemy: it will be necessary to arrest and prosecute in order to neutralise destabilising actors.»
Over the past five years, France has set up a number of organisations and tools to meet these challenges. In addition to the intelligence services, there are structures such as Viginum, the vigilance and protection service against foreign digital interference. Created in 2021 and reporting to the Prime Minister, its role is to detect foreign disinformation campaigns in order to protect the French public debate.
Other, more innovative initiatives are being implemented. These include French Response, a scheme run by the French Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs to provide a humorous response on social networks to disinformation campaigns targeting France abroad. Maxime Audinet considers it to be rather relevant:
«What's interesting about French Response is that it clearly breaks away from traditional, highly polished diplomatic rhetoric, without falling into the trap of a "diplomatic" style. trolling manipulative, abusive or provocative. It's more about storytelling, humour, satire and derision, which obviously works».
The response to these hybrid tactics also takes place at an individual level. This level is crucial, as the manipulation of information is above all a matter of cognitive influence: the challenge lies in the adversaries' ability to influence mental frameworks, beliefs, emotions and interpretative reflexes in a lasting way.
For General Jean-Marc Vigilant, «this resilience depends above all on educating and training young minds in critical thinking and the effects of social networks. Learning how to use them means explaining how an information bubble or an algorithm works, or how to create a "social network". deepfake. The idea is not to deny the existence of disinformation, but to put its scope into perspective so as to avoid falling into a constant paranoia that undermines public debate and democracy, and suggests that our societies are extremely vulnerable.»
It is precisely because democracies are open societies, with transparent debate, that they have the resources to resist this type of offensive.
Informational influence: a long Russian history
Disinformation has a long history in Russia. As Maxime Audinet points out, «there is a real know-how that goes back to the Cold War, with the «active measures» of the first KGB directorate general, and even to the pre-revolutionary period. We can already see the use of disinformation for foreign policy purposes, for example with the production in the Russian empire of the Protocol of the Elders of Zion, a false conspiracy document used to justify and fuel anti-Semitism before the First World War and later under the Nazi regime.»
The practices of the Russian authorities show a strong continuity, systematically and uninhibitedly mobilising disinformation to weaken the adversary, convince, present Russia as a major world power and promote a positive image.
Following Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014, the concept of hybrid warfare is evolving, tightening around information manipulation, cyber attacks and subversion operations. In response to Russia's destabilising actions on its soil, renamed “hybrid threats”, the European Union is establishing its own definition: harmful activities planned and carried out with malicious intent to undermine a target, such as a state or institution, using a combination of tools, including disinformation, cyber attacks, clandestine political manoeuvring, or even the threat of military force.
The real innovation lies in the use of technology: the digital age has greatly reduced the cost of producing disinformation and increased its reach. It is now much simpler to simultaneously deploy thousands of accounts to promote a specific narrative than it was during the Cold War, when it was necessary to rely on heavier and more expensive media.
The use of state-owned media such as RT (Russia Today) and Sputnik has also marked a turning point in influence practices. According to Maxime Audinet, after the Russian-Georgian war in 2008, these media adopted a new stance, known as «alternative» or counter-hegemonic. The aim was no longer to promote a positive image of Russia, but to «break the monopoly of the Anglo-Saxon media in the global flow of information», to quote Vladimir Putin during a visit to RT headquarters in 2013.
This is one of Russia's main objectives: to be seen as a strong state whose strategy has long been calculated and institutionalised. However, the reality is more nuanced, according to Maxime Audinet:
«There is a tendency to overestimate the doctrinal and institutional depth of these practices, even though they are often the result of individual initiatives and opportunistic experimentation. People try things out, see what works and what doesn't, and that's how these practices become institutionalised, rather than through long-planned strategic decisions».»
All in all, Vladimir Putin's Russia seems to have lost some key strategic battles over the last four years. For General Jean-Marc Vigilant, the conclusion is clear:
«Putin has lost strategically: he wanted to push NATO back, but has ended up with an extra 2,500 km of NATO borders. He wanted to disunite Ukraine, but Ukraine has never been so united. He wanted to separate and weaken the Europeans: we have never been so federated and we are in the process of rearming ourselves by force. In the end, he lost a lot.»
In his view, Russia seems to be planning a headlong rush. After having invested so many resources, in financial, human and material terms, Vladimir Putin is forced to continue the war effort, both on the Ukrainian front and in the information field," adds the general:
«Its aim is to test NATO's solidity, to test our commitment to the other member countries of the Alliance, particularly with regard to the use of Article 5, the collective defence clause. Some countries feel that they cannot defend themselves without the United States. Putin is playing on that. He is trying to fracture our European cohesion.»
