In modern conditions, all parties to the conflict seek to control exactly the
cognitive space. For this purpose, all opportunities of strategic communications are
used, informational, psychological, cybernetic and other actions (actions, operations,
etc.) are carried out, which are aimed at both the direct participants in the conflict and
the population of the countries participating in it, the international community. The
peculiarity is that even when state actors perform actions in a planned and coordinated
manner, they take place against the background of the chaotic target and random
similar influences of all other actors. This transforms into an information-cybernetic
and cognitive version of the war of "all against all" (in cybernetic, informational and
cognitive spaces). As a result, as the conducted studies show, the objects to which
cognitive actions are directed can be not only put into a state of cognitive resonance,
dissonance or imbalance, but can also receive informational and cognitive injuries,
reach the cognitive limits of perception (the impossibility of further safe perception of
), partial or complete cognitive disorientation and even before cognitive collapse, with
the subsequent transition to a state of cognitive aggression or frustration in everything,
apathy and depression. That is, to get a stress disorder due to cognitive trauma. In
addition, the information impact is supposed to be an impact not only on the human
psyche, but also on the functioning of the organs and systems of the human body [31].
All this became the determining factors forming the hybrid war syndrome, in
which practically the entire territory of the country is a zone of active destructive
actions of different nature and character.
At the moment, in the above categories, both combatants and civilians, who find
themselves in the hybrid conflict zone, there is a manifestation of a number of
characteristic psychological and behavioural characteristics that can be characterized
as “hybrid war syndrome” and its derivatives “specific military hybrid war syndrome”,
“specific PTSD of hybrid warfare” and others. The reasons for the occurrence of such
states are the consequences of different levels of threats to life and health, the constant
change installation and intensity of combat tension, duration of combat and specific
non-combat loads of varying intensity, often exceeding the limits of human
capabilities, loss of comrades, participation in violence against the enemy, which occur
in a complex ethno-national situation against the background of intense complex
cognitive influences.
Thus, the syndrome of hybrid warfare (hybrid conflict) is a condition manifested
as a complex of characteristic mental, psychosomatic, physiological and cognitive
changes that occur to varying degrees in the population of countries involved in a
hybrid conflict, subjected to a combination of traumatic influences of various nature
and a complex of informational and psychological and cognitive influences, having
individual and group manifestations.
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