Countering Hybrid Warfare in Central and Eastern Europe

Countering Hybrid Warfare in Central and Eastern Europe examines hybrid warfare in Central and Eastern Europe and the Western Balkans in the context of Russia’s war against Ukraine. It approaches hybrid warfare as the coordinated use of diverse instruments to exploit vulnerabilities and shape decision-making below the conventional war. Bringing together contributions from diverse disciplinary and regional backgrounds, the book introduces the vulnerable-state concept and challenges assumptions that vulnerability is equivalent to weakness and fragility. The case-studies of Moldova, Serbia, Austria, and Czechia show that vulnerability is not distributed simply according to state size, alliance membership, or formal institutional stability. Instead, hybrid strategies exploit the grey zone between resilience and fragility, while vulnerable states also adapt, resist, and learn under constraint. Methodologically, the book combines qualitative case studies, discourse analysis, policy evaluation, and threat assessment, drawing extensively on local sources that are not always accessible to English-language scholarship. This interdisciplinary approach reflects the complexity of hybrid warfare itself, which transcends conventional academic boundaries. By integrating theoretical frameworks with sustained empirical, the volume speaks to both scholarly and policy-oriented audiences regardless of their location or orientation. The book will be of interest to researchers and policymakers concerned with hybrid threats, resilience, European security, and Russia’s war against Ukraine.