Russian cyber operations have persisted for more than a decade not because they are decisive, but because cyberspace rewards continuous campaigning below the threshold of armed conflict. Drawing on Ukraine’s frontline experience under sustained hybrid aggression, this Senior Leader Perspective argues that the prevailing Western emphasis on cyber deterrence fundamentally misreads the nature of the domain. Russia’s cyber activity is not a discrete series of attacks that can be prevented through threatened retaliation; it is a permanent instrument of statecraft designed to generate cumulative strategic pressure over time. The essay contends that the appropriate strategic objective is therefore not deterrence, but exhaustion. Rather than attempting to convince Russia to stop campaigning, Ukraine and its allies should seek to impose sustained operational and resource costs that gradually erode Russia’s capacity to conduct concurrent cyber and hybrid operations across multiple fronts. The argument builds on concepts of persistent engagement, defend forward, and cyber persistence theory, while grounding them in Ukraine’s operational experience during the full-scale war. Ultimately, the author proposes a coalition strategy centered on continuous defensive and offensive cyber pressure designed to force Russia to divert finite cyber resources toward self-defense, thereby weakening the cyber support structure that underpins Russian military operations and long-term hybrid aggression.
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doi.org/10.55682/cdr/61jq-bkb1
The Cyber Defense Review
Volume 11, Issue 2