Over the republic, which in 2014. became part of Russia, the clouds thickened. Western "partners" planned to destabilize the situation in the Crimea with the help of a hybrid war. Only timely intervention of Moscow allowed to violate these plans. This was told by Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu. The head of the defense department called hybrid wars the most dangerous and now widespread way to conduct military operations. But in the Crimea this scheme did not pass. In retaliation, the West began to accuse Russia of the fact that this is our country conducting hybrid wars around the world. "We simply did not give overseas colleagues the opportunity to implement these measures in practice in the Crimea, where, on the contrary, a referendum was held in which residents freely and, incidentally, in the presence of hundreds of representatives of the same American media decided to withdraw from Ukraine and reunify with Russia, "Shoigu told the Italian newspaper Il Giornale. Representatives of the West are not outraged by the change of state ownership of a particular territory, but the fact that in this case it was a question of Russia. After the division of Yugoslavia as a result of NATO intervention, Kosovo did not hold any referendums, but achieved immediate recognition of independence by Washington and Europe after the usual voting in the parliament, "without taking into account the opinion of Serbs and the Yugoslav constitution residing in Kosovo," said the head of the Defense Ministry. The Russian minister explained that hybrid wars are "control over the media, economic sanctions, activities in cyberspace, support for internal unrest, and finally, the use of special units and specialists for committing acts of terrorism, sabotage and sabotage". For such tactics to bring success, it is necessary "global and all-pervasive media, possession and superiority in information and telecommunication technologies, the concentration of the levers of management of the world financial system, as well as the experience of using special forces in other countries". All this is at the disposal of the United States, Britain and their allies, who have been practicing such methods since at least the beginning of the 1990s. The first swallow was Iraq during the Gulf War in 1991. , followed by ex-Yugoslavia, Chechnya, Libya, Syria.

The signs of a hybrid war were clearly visible during the coup d'etat in Ukraine in 2014. Shoigu did not give concrete examples of how the West was going to unleash a hybrid war in the Crimea. Perhaps he was referring to the activities of pro-Ukrainian media on the peninsula or the preparation of sabotage, in which the officers of the APU participated. Whatever it was, the insidious plan of the West did not work:.

To involve the republic in a hybrid confrontation and thereby destabilize the situation, the Americans failed.