Russian "Hybrid Warfare": Resurgence and Politicization

Fridman's monograph is the most rigorous academic treatment of the hybrid warfare concept and its application to Russia available in English. His central contribution is to distinguish between what Western analysts mean by Russian hybrid warfare and what Russian strategists actually mean when they discuss gibridnaya voyna — and to show that these are substantially different concepts. Western discourse has, in Fridman's account, politicised the term in ways that inflate perceptions of Russian capability and coherence, while obscuring the genuine strategic logic underlying Russian information operations.

Published by Oxford University Press and endorsed by Frank Hoffman of RUSI and David Betz of King's College London, this is a work of serious scholarship that has direct policy implications. For practitioners, the core takeaway is methodological: accurate threat assessment requires engaging with Russian strategic thinking on its own terms, not filtering it through Western conceptual frameworks. The book is, as David Betz writes, "highly readable, perceptive, and consistently astute" — an unusual combination of analytical precision and accessibility that makes it essential for both researchers and practitioners in this field.