STRATEGIES FOR DEFENSE AGAINST ATTACK WITH ACTIVE USE OF ACTIONS IN THE INFORMATION SPACE

Abstract

This paper is devoted to the search for directions and peculiarities of forming a defense strategy in conditions when participants not only in hostilities and military conflicts, but also international policy actors in general actively use information actions to promote their interests, and in doing so, adhering to strategies, often of an aggressive expansionary nature, which can be traced in some cases for many decades. Under such conditions, information actions in the form of solely responding to the current situation, tactical measures, or even complexes of measures of the operational level of planning cannot by themselves properly ensure the reduction and leveling of the destructive information and psychological impact of various participants in filling the information space, proper protection of information security and state security. Since the information policy of any state, especially when it comes to elements of intelligence activities or information activities of non-governmental organizations, has significant (sometimes key) elements that are not publicly disclosed and kept secret, long-term information strategies often have to be analyzed not only by declarative documents, but, above all, by their actual manifestations. Moreover, when it comes to analyzing the strategy of information activity, it is necessary to study the information actions of subjects over a long period of time. The paper analyzes the identified and documented (despite the considerable latency of certain elements of such processes) complexes of information actions, trends and patterns used by the leadership of states, both those in which the state and political regime is considered democratic and those with totalitarian (authoritarian) regimes, and participants (leaders) of certain formally or actually non-governmental organizations. The scientific novelty of the work and its practical results are the application of the analysis of historical experience to assess the peculiarities of modern confrontation in the information space, taking into account the spread of modern information and communication technologies that cause socio-psychological changes, in particular, directly in the context of repulsion of the Russian large-scale armed invasion by the Ukrainian Defense Forces, which at all stages of preparation and implementation is accompanied by large-scale activities aimed at implementing destructive information and psychological influence of the enemy. The conclusions of the paper propose specific measures that could increase the efficiency of public administration bodies in the field of protection of information space security and information security of Ukrainian citizens from destructive information and psychological influence of the enemy and other participants in the information space.