Information Threats to the State Security of Ukraine in the Hybrid Warfare

The existence, self-preservation and progressive development of Ukraine as a sovereign state depend on a clear commitment to protection of its national interests and provision of state security. In modern conditions, the geopolitical standing of a state in the international arena, its ability to influence world events depends not only on economic and military strength but also on the information factor which plays increasingly important role nowadays. Rapid IT development at the beginning of the 21st century has led to a new global socio-technological problem, namely the problem of information security of a man, society and the state. The essence of this problem is that the most important interests of a man, society and the state are determined by the information environment. Therefore, deliberate or unintentional, external or internal influences on the information sphere can hinder those interests and pose a threat to the information security of a man, society and the state. Such a threat to national security is posed by external information expansion. The development of the advanced information technologies has led to the transition from the so-called classical war to a new type of warfare, namely information and psychological one. The sophisticated technical equipment and facilities which can affect not only the psyche and consciousness of people but also the information and technical infrastructure of states enable us to consider information weapons as a means of mass destruction capable of exerting large-scale psychological impact on political and business opponents. Similarly, the Russian Federation exerts destructive informational and psychological influence both outside and inside Ukraine using social contradictions, provoking ethnic and religious conflicts, undermining social unity and inciting hostility. The analysis of the ways of applying methods of information and psychological influence by the Russian Federation on the temporarily occupied territories of Donetsk and Luhansk regions and in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea makes it possible to identify major threats to state security in the information sphere which are aimed at discrediting the top military and political leadership of the state, inciting anti-state sentiments in Ukraine and conducting information operations to mold the cultural oneness of the population on the occupied territory of Crimea and the population of Russia. The information aggression against Ukraine nowadays is aimed at weakening and splitting the country from within through engineering and exacerbating existing political, socio-economic, ethnic and other contradictions. Underestimation of the possibilities of information and psychological influence and of measures to counteract influences as well as failure to regulate the specifics of a particular territory can be fatal during the further aggravation of the military-political situation around Ukraine. In view of the above, the task of all state, public, research, expert, and journalistic institutions should be to develop effective measures to neutralize the aggressive information activities of the Russian Federation against Ukraine and to counteract their further conduct.