Russian Cyber Deterrence from a European Perspective

To understand why and how Moscow's internet capabilities are being used to defend against Western attacks, the present paper attempts to answer the following questions: Why Russia resorts to cyber weapons against Western targets? What are the characteristics of Russia's cyber war against the West and how is it pursued?This study is qualitative (descriptive-analytical) and is of Ex-Post Facto (causal) research category. An Inferential methodology has been utilized to analyze data in the context of the concepts of cyber warfare and political cyber-attacks. The Findings show that Moscow uses cyber weapons against Western targets to counter the West's hostile actions, especially in post-communist territories, considering high denial possibility and weakness of its kinetic components.  The most important feature of Russia's cyber war against the West is the development of the concept of cyber deterrence in this country to create a balance under the condition of normal military and political competition. On this basis, Russia's hybrid war against the West is mainly waged through distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, hacking, and utilizing malware.