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Hybrid Warriors: Proxies, Freelancers and Moscow's Struggle for Ukraine
The Russian government's deniable use of rogues, businessmen, enthusiasts, mercenaries and political technologists confounded policymakers as Moscow waged a covert invasion of Ukraine in 2014. Did Crimea and Donbas reveal the Kremlin's new "hybrid war" playbook? Or was Moscow itself manipulated by the very forces it had unleashed? Given the disinformation and skewing of the narrative, it is no wonder that the international community has dramatically misunderstood the very nature of this war and was unprepared for the Kremlin's sudden and brutal escalation in 2022.
As Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine risks pitting the world's great powers against each other, Hybrid Warriors traces the trajectory of the conflict from the bottom up. Starting from the first pivotal years in the 2010s, the book draws on unique interviews, reporting from the conflict zones, and wider on-the-ground research, to reconstruct the granular relationships between civilians, non-state actors, and the Kremlin that co-opted them. In the process, it speaks not just to the history of this conflict, but also to our wider understanding of how Putin's Kremlin works and how it has prosecuted its war on Ukraine.
As Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine risks pitting the world's great powers against each other, Hybrid Warriors traces the trajectory of the conflict from the bottom up. Starting from the first pivotal years in the 2010s, the book draws on unique interviews, reporting from the conflict zones, and wider on-the-ground research, to reconstruct the granular relationships between civilians, non-state actors, and the Kremlin that co-opted them. In the process, it speaks not just to the history of this conflict, but also to our wider understanding of how Putin's Kremlin works and how it has prosecuted its war on Ukraine.
352 pages, Hardcover
Published December 1, 2022
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85 people want to read
About the author
Anna Arutunyan
10 books9 followersAnna Arutunyan is a Russian-American journalist and the author of The Putin Mystique. She is currently a fellow at the Kennan Institute in Washington.
Anna Arutunyan’s work has appeared in USA Today, The Christian Science Monitor, The Nation, Foreign Policy in Focus, and The Moscow News, where she is an editor and senior correspondent. She is author of The Media in Russia (McGraw- Hill, 2009), and is the co-author (with Vladimir Shlapentokh) of Freedom, Repression and Private Property in Russia (Cambridge University Press, 2013). She has lectured on Russian power, politics and media at Tampere University in Finland and at Michigan State University.
A bilingual Russian-American, she was born in the Soviet Union in 1980 but grew up and received her education in the United States. In 2002 she returned to Moscow to write about Russia.
Anna Arutunyan’s work has appeared in USA Today, The Christian Science Monitor, The Nation, Foreign Policy in Focus, and The Moscow News, where she is an editor and senior correspondent. She is author of The Media in Russia (McGraw- Hill, 2009), and is the co-author (with Vladimir Shlapentokh) of Freedom, Repression and Private Property in Russia (Cambridge University Press, 2013). She has lectured on Russian power, politics and media at Tampere University in Finland and at Michigan State University.
A bilingual Russian-American, she was born in the Soviet Union in 1980 but grew up and received her education in the United States. In 2002 she returned to Moscow to write about Russia.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
June 14, 2023
Hybrid Warriors is a paradigm-shifting exposé of the long-boiling Russia-Ukraine conflict through the lens Russia’s separatist proxies in Ukraine and the Russian state. Anna Arutunyan, a Russian-American journalist, provides insightful context to the conflict’s escalation in recent years. Beginning in 2014 as a “hybrid” war sparked by pro-Russia miners, truck drivers, and shady businessmen simmering over ideological grievances caused by Soviet dissolution, the conflict became increasingly kinetic in the face of staunch Ukrainian resistance and Russia’s increasing military support. Soon, Putin’s “little green men,” effectively Russian paratroopers, descended on Crimea, and the Donbas was swarming with new “professional” salaried soldiers with the full material support of the Russian state. Arutunyan finishes at the crescendo of the full-scale invasion of 2022, a defensive maneuver in the eyes of Moscow, she argues, fueled by the exigencies of a growing nationalist undercurrent and dwindling prospects of a diplomatically engineered resolution.
While Arutunyan provides useful context on Russian justifications for escalation, she too often absolves the Russian president, a man she says who often “hides behind the curtain of dark powers,” of responsibility, portraying him as a victim of circumstances out of his ambit. She argues that imperialist ferment from those who first clamored for Donbas statehood forced Putin’s hand, whereby Putin could neither denounce them and risk loss of popular support, nor back them and consequentially court Western sanctions. Putin, she writes, was merely trying to control the situation (by acceding to separatism by backing the nonstate proxies) while also washing his hands at the same time (by claiming these separatists were acting on their own volition). Yet this portrayal is misleading. Even in 2014, when Arutunayan claims Putin had yet to make up his mind on the Donbas, the Russian president was already legitimizing the separatist movement by calling it a part of the historic “New Russia” (Novorossiya) and denying the basis of Ukrainian statehood. Putin was also alleged to have provided the antiaircraft missile that was used to shoot down the MH-17 passenger flight in 2014 – a grave assessment that counters the notion of an indecisive president.
Arutunyan's argument is also diminished by several other matters of historical reality. Her contentions ignore Putin’s long-held aspirations of Russian revanchism and his desire to reconstitute the Soviet Union. She describes Putin’s solitary directives, where he even overruled his generals and closest confidants, that precipitated his confiscation of Crimea, yet fails to convincingly argue how this was a “defensive” move brought by circumstance. She also fails to defend Putin’s idealization of a Ukrainian “land bridge,” which exceeds the territorial limits of the Donbas, as well as the major political goal of the so-called “special military operation,” which was to decapitate the pro-Western Ukrainian government. Putin’s ambitions have almost always been proactive, not reactive, and animated by a nostalgic fixation on a mythical past. With the conflict in Ukraine raging at full boil, readers could also argue that Arutunyan wrote this book too soon; the fate of Ukraine’s borders and Russia’s political promise are still uncertain, as is the legacy of Russia’s leader.
While Arutunyan provides useful context on Russian justifications for escalation, she too often absolves the Russian president, a man she says who often “hides behind the curtain of dark powers,” of responsibility, portraying him as a victim of circumstances out of his ambit. She argues that imperialist ferment from those who first clamored for Donbas statehood forced Putin’s hand, whereby Putin could neither denounce them and risk loss of popular support, nor back them and consequentially court Western sanctions. Putin, she writes, was merely trying to control the situation (by acceding to separatism by backing the nonstate proxies) while also washing his hands at the same time (by claiming these separatists were acting on their own volition). Yet this portrayal is misleading. Even in 2014, when Arutunayan claims Putin had yet to make up his mind on the Donbas, the Russian president was already legitimizing the separatist movement by calling it a part of the historic “New Russia” (Novorossiya) and denying the basis of Ukrainian statehood. Putin was also alleged to have provided the antiaircraft missile that was used to shoot down the MH-17 passenger flight in 2014 – a grave assessment that counters the notion of an indecisive president.
Arutunyan's argument is also diminished by several other matters of historical reality. Her contentions ignore Putin’s long-held aspirations of Russian revanchism and his desire to reconstitute the Soviet Union. She describes Putin’s solitary directives, where he even overruled his generals and closest confidants, that precipitated his confiscation of Crimea, yet fails to convincingly argue how this was a “defensive” move brought by circumstance. She also fails to defend Putin’s idealization of a Ukrainian “land bridge,” which exceeds the territorial limits of the Donbas, as well as the major political goal of the so-called “special military operation,” which was to decapitate the pro-Western Ukrainian government. Putin’s ambitions have almost always been proactive, not reactive, and animated by a nostalgic fixation on a mythical past. With the conflict in Ukraine raging at full boil, readers could also argue that Arutunyan wrote this book too soon; the fate of Ukraine’s borders and Russia’s political promise are still uncertain, as is the legacy of Russia’s leader.
September 24, 2023
Mooi boek dat nog eens 50 tinten toevoegt aan de grey zone, maar ook eens met die andere review dat Poetin zelf er wel heel makkelijk van af komt.
November 26, 2022
How did it start?
Suffers from being written quickly but it gives a fresh picture of Putin being dragged reluctantly into war in Donbas by local separatists and Russian ultra nationalists like Girkin and Malofeev. No grand plan and often no plan at all.
Suffers from being written quickly but it gives a fresh picture of Putin being dragged reluctantly into war in Donbas by local separatists and Russian ultra nationalists like Girkin and Malofeev. No grand plan and often no plan at all.
December 11, 2022
As a complete newcomer to this field, I found this a fascinating account of the complexities behind the so-called separatist movements that have played such a prominent role in Ukraine in Crimea and the east of the country in recent years. Anna Arutunyan's depiction of Putin's apparent dithering (whether to go all-in and support the separatists or not) and the extent to which he himself may have felt he had little room to manoeuvre is particularly compelling. There are moments when Arutunyan gives us a closer glimpse into why the people in eastern Ukraine, in particular, may have been aggrieved by the attitudes of people in Kyiv or the west of the country towards themselves, but I do wish there had been more of this material. Arutunyan shows very clearly that the 'separitists' and their supporters are not mere Russian stooges, but I'd like to have understood a bit better just why they felt so embittered towards 'their' government in Kyiv. That said, I found this a really interesting and informative book which has given me a much more nuanced understanding of the origins of this conflict than I had before.
March 4, 2023
This book is arguably the best single read on Moscow's interactions with Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine, and how that relationship eventually propelled the Kremlin's expanded invasion in 2022. Remarkable reportage throughout.
The only reason this book isn't five stars is for the treatment of the initial Ukrainian province that the Kremlin invaded: Crimea. Throughout the book, Arutunyan gives unfortunate credence to Russian propaganda points regarding the Ukrainians living in Crimea, from eliding the fact that a majority of Crimeans voted in 1991 for Ukrainian independence to the fact that, by 2013, desire for Russian annexation was in a clear minority (and continuing to decline). At one point Arutunyan writes, sans evidence, that by early 2014 an "overwhelming majority" of Crimeans desired Russian annexation. (If such a desire was "overwhelming," Moscow certainly wouldn't have imposed such a sham, ballot-by-bayonet "referendum" asserting its annexation.) An unfortunate framing in an otherwise comprehensive examination of Russia's nine-year-long invasion of Ukraine.
The only reason this book isn't five stars is for the treatment of the initial Ukrainian province that the Kremlin invaded: Crimea. Throughout the book, Arutunyan gives unfortunate credence to Russian propaganda points regarding the Ukrainians living in Crimea, from eliding the fact that a majority of Crimeans voted in 1991 for Ukrainian independence to the fact that, by 2013, desire for Russian annexation was in a clear minority (and continuing to decline). At one point Arutunyan writes, sans evidence, that by early 2014 an "overwhelming majority" of Crimeans desired Russian annexation. (If such a desire was "overwhelming," Moscow certainly wouldn't have imposed such a sham, ballot-by-bayonet "referendum" asserting its annexation.) An unfortunate framing in an otherwise comprehensive examination of Russia's nine-year-long invasion of Ukraine.
August 23, 2024
Honestly, I was expecting a lot more from this book. In essence, the author has done a very broad coverage of Russo-Ukrainians that have refused to let go of the soviet sentiment - a topic worthy of its own literature. This however; resulted in what the world came to know as the ''Little Green Men''.
I approached this book with a notion that it will give me an insight into the hybrid warfare planning that was done by the Russian war criminals prior the annexation of Crimea in 2014. And yet, the book shed very little if any light regarding this, placing majority of its focus on the lack of competency within Russia's military and political command as well as the Russia's signature betrayal characteristic when it comes to its ''allies''.
I approached this book with a notion that it will give me an insight into the hybrid warfare planning that was done by the Russian war criminals prior the annexation of Crimea in 2014. And yet, the book shed very little if any light regarding this, placing majority of its focus on the lack of competency within Russia's military and political command as well as the Russia's signature betrayal characteristic when it comes to its ''allies''.
October 18, 2023
Very not mainstream view of the origins of the Russia Ukraine conflict but definitely worth understanding.
May 31, 2024
Incredibly prescient backstory to an ongoing tragedy. A must read for anyone needing a deeper understanding of the conflict in Ukraine.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews