[More Objective than Subjective]

There’s a really great research paper out from National Defence Academy of Latvia Center for Security and Strategic Research titled ‘RUSSIA’S NEW GENERATION WARFARE IN UKRAINE:
IMPLICATIONS FOR LATVIAN DEFENSE POLICY’( wow, that’s a mouthful...good thing for copy and paste :)

It lays out Russia’s goals for military capability by 2020, and it’s stunning at how Ukraine is a play by play out of Russia’s changing strategy.

Basically, until conditions are right to go in conventionally, they will wage a cultural war, ‘from direct annihilation of the opponent to its inner decay’, ‘from war in the physical environment to a war in the human consciousness and in cyberspace’(can anyone say trolls), using ‘specially prepared forces and commercial irregular groupings’, ‘from the traditional (3D) battleground to information/psychological warfare and war of
perceptions.’

And they see their enemy as permanent; a permanent war.

It’s really fascinating and very ominous.

[Mariner]

"hey will wage a cultural war, ‘from direct annihilation of the opponent to its inner decay’, ‘from war in the physical environment to a war in the human consciousness and in cyberspace’(can anyone say trolls), using ‘specially prepared forces and commercial irregular groupings’, ‘from the traditional (3D) battleground to information/psychological warfare and war of perceptions.’"

Brilliant.

AND Ominous.

But truth be told they learned it all from us, from the Cold War through to the Serbian-Kosovo war and OUR initial probes into Ukraine.

I'm thinking the Russians are playing defense here.