Russia honed its practice of conducting a “hybrid war” during the violent conflicts in the former Yugoslavia.
This ex-Ambassador to Croatia Oleksandr Levchenko said in an interview with “Today”.
“Even then, in 1991, the beginning of the conflict had a hybrid character. First, the war is inserted in people’s heads by the media misinformation, then the party who is interested in the escalation of the conflict, arming of the national minority, which implements checkpoints on the roads and facilities of communication, then there is a support for this minority from the neighboring state by sending volunteers and units of the armed forces so that the ethnic minority became the military-separatist majority,” – said the diplomat.
According to him, supporting the forces that opposed the conversion of the former republics of Yugoslavia into national States with the recognition of former administrative borders of the interstate, the Soviet (Russian) General staff and the foreign intelligence wanted to prevent the process of collapse of the Soviet Union and begin the journey of gathering new lands under the wing of Russia.
“Besides, even then in Croatia were studied scenarios the creation of separatist territorial entities with claims to the formation of pseudo-States,” – said Levchenko.
Read an interview with former Ambassador to Croatia: “the conflict in the Donbas was conceived by the Kremlin as a diversion”.
