Russia Finds a New Way to Wage an Age-Old War

The article takes a couple of swipes at Russia that hold little water.
After Germany was defeated and millions of Russians murdered/killed their hand in Germany could be understood. During the winter Olympics, Putin snowed everyone as he got ready to deal with the WTO trying to move Kiev more towards the west. Where riots caused Ukrainians who saw themselves as Russian to beg for Russian help. Not to mention Kiev owed Russia some money.
The action in Kiev did keep a lot of Russians out of Syria. Where someone was fanning the flames and causing a civil war.
I couldn't help but notice the ME and North Africa lost thousands to war and caused a new civilization to be born in Europe.
Russia is worried about the West and it's agenda to bring a New Age on the world.
Russia is not innocent. Nor, are we.
Going to war with Russia is not in America's best interest. Russia is an ally against Islamic terror.
Russia exposed Hillary's emails on Bernie. That is nothing to what someone did in the Ukraine, Syria, Egypt, North Africa and Libya. Not to mention causing huge problems in moral in our military.
M. Morris RVT

Hybrid warfare allows Putin to control territory and populations as well as influence governments directly and indirectly without having to risk conventional war. From what I've read about the modern Russian military and from the occasional video clip of what is purported to be their training, I get the distinct impression that the Russian military is _not_ well-prepared for a conventional war against a modern, professional military. If that is the case, then Putin would risk enormous loss of credibility were he to enter into the Russian military into a conventional fight and find it performing poorly. Hybrid warfare allows Putin some "capital preservation" while engaging in speculative bids for expansion of his sphere of influence.

Additionally, when he prepares the field ahead of time by developing at least the _appearance_ of political support among the local population in the territory of interest, (and in some places, such support could be genuine), he makes it more difficult for Western nations to effectively counter his activity.

The Russians are basically fighting along their periphery and on their home turf where they are generally unbeatable.