INFORMATIONAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL OPERATIONS IN HYBRID WAR: HISTORIOGRAPHICAL ASPECT

Abstract

The object of a special military-historical study of the problem of information-psychological operations in the conduct of the hybrid war has recently become. With the growing role of propaganda-psychological influence on the opposing side, the subject of information–psychological struggle in modern military-historical scientific literature becomes extremely important. The events in Ukraine that took place from 2014 to 2018 clearly demonstrate the enormous psychological and informational impact of the Russian anti-Ukrainian campaign, which is being pursued for the purpose of a geopolitical and neo-imperial revenge by the Kremlin authorities.

Given the insufficient level of coverage in the historiography of the issues of information and psychological operations, the purpose was to consider the views of military scientists on the history of information and psychological struggle, to analyze the works of domestic and foreign authors on information and psychological operations, to highlight the use of propaganda materials as informational and psychological weapons.

Given the insufficient level of coverage in the historiography of the issues of information and psychological operations, the purpose was to consider the views of military scientists on the history of information and psychological struggle, to analyze the works of domestic and foreign authors on information and psychological operations, to highlight the use of propaganda materials as informational and psychological weapons.

The researches of domestic and foreign authors concerning carrying out of informational-psychological operations in the hybrid war are analyzed. It was revealed that such operations were widely used in armed struggle at the end of the twentieth century. and today is the subject of in-depth examination of scientists from various fields of knowledge – political scientists, psychologists, sociologists, and military personnel. In the historical perspective, the evolution of the concept of «information-psychological operations» from the military propaganda of the First World War to the seminal wars of the XXI century in literary sources is shown and attention is paid to the works of domestic scientists about the peculiarities of Russian informational influence and counteraction to it in the context of Ukraine’s information security.

In the discourse of the problems of the hybrid war, one can distinguish works that deal with various aspects of information-psychological confrontation in local wars and armed conflicts. In clarifying the range of available historiography of the problem, the author distinguishes the following groups: studies, which addresses the genesis of information-psychological warfare, trends in its development, forms and means of information confrontation; works devoted directly to information-psychological operations in the military conflicts of our time; the study of domestic scientists about the hybrid war against Ukraine and the role of the Russian informational propaganda campaign in the annexation of the Crimea.

The scientific novelty of the results obtained is the lack of works in Ukrainian historiography that detail the information-psychological operations in the military conflicts of the 20th and 21st centuries. Therefore, an attempt is made to analyze this aspect of the problem.

The analysis of publications devoted to information-psychological operations in the history of armed conflicts proves that they do not cover the whole spectrum of the problem and the further task of scientists is a systematic analysis of the informational and psychological impact on the civilian population and armed forces, and subsequent researches should be carried out in the direction of development of complex materials from the history of hybrid wars with a significant emphasis on the consideration of information and psychological actions in such wars.