Description
The paper focuses on the EU and Russian narratives on “hybrid threats” (HT). Its main import is to think critically about the rationale of those narratives and the effects of the constructed linkage between hybridity and border security on EU-Russia relations. The traditional threat of a military attack against a Member-State territory having been set aside, the EU leaders rebuilt the security narratives based on multidimensional, transboundary problems that blur the traditional divides. They declared the hybrid activities - “from cyber-attacks disrupting the economy and public services, through targeted disinformation campaigns to hostile military actions” - as a serious and acute threat to the EU and its Member States. In this context, Russia is perceived as a source of insecurity by combining military actions (2014 intervention in Ukraine) and disinformation campaigns. Russia’s use of combined methods of subversion, propaganda, conventional, and unconventional means is not new. What is novel is the new context where hybridity has been applied. According to Russia’s Military Doctrine of 2014, current military conflicts involve “integrated employment of military force and political, economic, informational or other non-military measures”. In fact, HT is a new label to old practices that seems to empower Russia. Resorting to the theoretical framework of Critical Geopolitics and based on qualitative content analysis of the EU and Russia official documents on HT and Crimea’s annexation, the paper aims to answer the central research question: How did the EU’s and Russia’s narratives on Crimea’s annexation and hybrid threats redefine their perceptions on border security?
