Venäjän informaatio-psykologinen sodankäyntitapa terrorismin torjunnassa ja viiden päivän sodassa

This study examines Russia’s Pattern of Information-Psychologic Warfare in Counter-terrorism and in the Five Day War. The first case of this comparative case study research examines an internal national security crisis, namely two of the most notorious terrorist strikes that took place firstly in The Moscow Dubrovka Theater in October 2002 and two years later in Beslan School 2004 in September. In the second case an external national security crisis, the Five Day War conducted in August 2008 between the Russian Federation and the state of Georgia will be analyzed. At the centre of this research report lays an idea: a war of information by using information as the target and as a weapon. Based on a comparative case study setting this study tries to understand how Russian pattern of information warfare manifests itself in the light of these two internal / external national security crises. Three hypotheses that guide this research report are: Russian pattern of information warfare has a long tradition which can be traced back to the Cold War era; it is possible to discern specifically Russian, partially divergent information warfare pattern; and finally by exploring the two recent internal / external national security crises, it becomes possible to sketch specifically Russian systematics. In this research report the main focus of interest is on the information-psychological dimension of the overall information warfare concept as part of the military science tradition. After such theoretical review the two empirical cases will be contextualized and chronologically introduced. Analysis will be sharpened on the parties’ actions especially from the information-psychological perspective. This will be done with the help of the developed Russia’s six action fields-model which has been divided into two main dimensions: political and military with three levels: strategic informa-tion-psychological level, and two tactical levels, namely information-technical and information-PSYOP. This creates six possible actions fields. As the empirical analysis will reveal, many of these six action fields have been used by Russia in its internal / external national security crises, which proves the study’s hypotheses: Russia has its own pattern of information psychologic warfare that is based on its historical tradition and as such it creates a base for Russian systematics.