Conceptualisation of the phenomenon of war in contemporary Russian military thought: General Gerasimov’s contribution

The paper conducts research on the understanding of war in Russian military thought from 2013 to 2019, during which time General of the Army Valery Gerasimov was (and still is) the Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation. Also, the subject matter of the research study is his personal stimulus to the intensification of the studies of the nature, character, physiognomy and types of contemporary war in the Russian military-scientific community, as well as the theoretical results obtained by Russian authors in that particular field in recent years. Essentially, the research effort made by the author of this paper focuses on the analysis of the formulations used by Russian authors to explain/define the content and scope of the term ?war?, as well as the interpretation of the typology of wars devised by some of them. A special reference has been made regarding the understanding of the so-called hybrid war in contemporary Russian military thought. For the purpose of the analysis, studies/monographs or scientific papers published in eminent Russian military scientific or professional journals by the relevant authors (most frequently retired military personnel, primarily those with the rank of colonel or general) from the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation were chosen. The research results presented in this paper can be useful to domestic political science, i.e., to the system of military sciences, in the sense of enriching the types of knowledge with respect to the comprehension of war and the potential commencement of the fundamental (according to their essence, partly philosophical) research studies dealing with that topic.