The aspects of dehumanization in the condition of hybrid war: on the example of attitudes the citizens of Ukraine to Russian soldiers – participants of the Russian-Ukrainian war

The article examines the features of dehumanization of Russian soldiers participating in the Russian-Ukrainian war in the perception of different groups of the population. Dehumanization is seen as a mechanism for denying human characteristics to individuals or groups of people, helping to justify violence, which is a necessary attribute of war. Against the background of the long Russian-Ukrainian war, it was possible to predict that the citizens of Ukraine would have blatant dehumanization of the enemy. However, one of the features of the hybrid war and in particular the information component in it is the blurring and weak personification of the image of the enemy, which is often labeled as an invading state. The aim of the article was to find out whether and how the mechanism of dehumanization works in these conditions. Achieving the goal required a clear personification of the object of dehumanization. The Russian military was chosen as such as the direct participants in the conflict, representing the attacking state. A qualitative method of pseudo-experimental research and in-depth interviews were chosen to identify the level and form of dehumanization. The experimental group was made up of internally displaced persons from the East, who represented the category of the population most affected by the actions of the Russian military due to the destruction of their homes, the loss of relatives or friends, and so on. The reference group was formed of people who were not directly injured during the war. To analyze the dehumanization of the Russian military, a scale of dehumanization has been developed, with blatant dehumanization at one extreme and subtle unconscious dehumanization at the other. It turned out that both in the experimental and in the reference group there was almost no blatant dehumanization, which may be due to the peculiarities of hybrid warfare, in particular the blurring of ideas about how the war is fought and who the enemy is. Instead, subtle forms of dehumanization, such as robotization and heroism, prevailed, confirming the influence of propaganda, which is one of the most important components of hybrid warfare. At the same time, in both groups, after the intervention, there was a shift from subtle forms of dehumanization to more blatant.