Unorthodox Warfare: The Russian Orthodox Church and the Kremlin’s Hybrid Warfare in the Sahel

Experts defining the activities of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) as part of Russia’s hybrid warfare (HW) often focus solely on the ROC’s propaganda against Ukraine. This leads to an incomplete account of how Russia weaponizes religion. Conceptually, HW refers not merely to disinformation but to a combination of conventional and unconventional warfighting methods. More importantly, empirical evidence indicates that elements of the ROC act not only as a disinformation machine but also as a troop recruitment platform, including in Africa. The recent expansion of the ROC into Africa is critical to Western security since, in some African states, the ROC is reportedly recruiting irregular soldiers to join the war against Ukraine. To offer an updated research and policy agenda, we examine the effectiveness of the ROC’s hybrid operations in the Sahel. This case has broader methodological relevance for studying the ROC’s activities across Africa. The aim is to lay the foundations for a critical academic discussion of the ROC’s HW activities in Africa and to derive best practices practitioners can use to evaluate HW effectiveness. By examining various open-source empirical data, we argue that it is analytically useful to define the ROC’s malign activities in the Sahel region as hybrid operations. These operations are thus far effective, producing strategic, operational, and tactical effects in support of Russia’s HW against the West. We conclude that a successful HW signature has seven basic elements: adaptability, ambiguity, asymmetry, deniability, irregularity, multimodality, and synchronicity. The West must support African states in defending against such hybrid operations.