HYBRID WARFARE: INFORMATION AND SECURITY DIMENSION

Abstract

The study of the information and security dimension is crucial for understanding the essence of the newest type of armed conflict – the hybrid war that the aggressor state, the Russian Federation, has been waging on Ukrainian territory since 2014, and therefore is relevant, scientifically and practically significant. The purpose of the article is to study the information component of hybrid wars in the context of Russia’s armed aggression against Ukraine. The author analyzes approaches to understanding the essence of hybrid warfare as a political and legal phenomenon and Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine as a war. The author emphasizes the information component of the war as one of its key elements in order to influence the consciousness of Ukrainian citizens and the world community. To understand it, the author uses classical philosophical, general scientific and special political science methods, which made it possible to formulate a definition of the phenomenon under study and characterize its components. The comparative legal method was widely used, which made it possible to highlight the peculiarities of the formation of the State information policy, its security components, and to outline the prospects for their updating. Based on the analysis of legal acts, the author reveals the fundamental provision of the Constitution of Ukraine, according to which the protection of sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine, ensuring its economic and information security are the most important functions of the State and the business of the entire Ukrainian people. In the context of the goals and course of the hybrid war, the author analyzes the peculiarities of citizens’ exercise of the constitutional right to information, the mechanism of its provision and protection. The author expresses views on the legal grounds and political expediency of updating the legal regulation of the information and security policy of the State. The author emphasizes the need to conduct extensive analytical research with a view to comprehensively studying the state of the state policy in the information sphere with a view to preventing and counteracting security threats, involving civil society institutions and the expert community in the development of optimal and effective political decisions, and the expediency of critical borrowing of the experience of foreign countries, primarily the European Union Member States. Thus, the information war that is being intensively waged by Russia against Ukraine, along with fullscale armed aggression, is a key component of hybrid warfare, a significant threat to the national security of the state, its sovereignty and territorial integrity.