Gerasimov Doctrine

The term "Gerasimov Doctrine" originates from a February 2013 article by General Valery Gerasimov, Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, published in the Russian trade weekly Voyenno-Promyshlennyy Kuryer ("Military-Industrial Courier") under the title "The Value of Science in Prediction." In it, Gerasimov argued that the boundary between war and peace had blurred, and that contemporary conflicts increasingly rely on non-military means—political, economic, informational, humanitarian, and covert—supplemented by the concealed use of military force, special operations forces, and proxy actors. He drew lessons from the Arab Spring and Western interventions, framing such methods as something Russia faced rather than practiced.

The label "Gerasimov Doctrine" was coined by analyst Mark Galeotti in a 2014 blog post interpreting the article in light of Russia's annexation of Crimea. Galeotti has since publicly retracted the framing, arguing it is a misnomer: Gerasimov's piece was descriptive and analytical, not a prescriptive doctrine, and Russia has no single codified strategy by that name. Despite this, the term remains widely used in Western policy discourse, NATO planning documents, and academic literature to describe Russian hybrid warfare or "new generation warfare."

Associated tactics commonly attributed to this approach include:

• Disinformation and influence operations (e.g., activity linked to the Internet Research Agency)
• Cyber operations against political and civilian targets
• Use of "little green men"—unmarked troops, as seen in Crimea in 2014
• Deployment of private military companies such as the Wagner Group
• Economic coercion, particularly via energy supplies
• Backing of sympathetic political movements abroad

Scholars including Galeotti, Charles Bartles, and Michael Kofman caution that the doctrine is more a Western analytical construct than an authentic Russian military concept, and that genuine Russian strategic thought is better captured in official documents like the 2014 and 2021 Military Doctrine of the Russian Federation and the National Security Strategy.