The General Staff Academy of Russia’s Armed Forces has been working on the topic since the end of 2014 and is now set to develop a complex manual on countering “color revolutions”, Russia’s daily newspaper Kommersant reports on Wednesday.
The experts will also work on the “soft power” method (non-contact impact on potential enemy), asymmetric operations and measures to strengthen Russia’s political system and the political culture of the politicians, civil servants, businessmen and other residents of the country.
Last week Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu told reporters at the Army-2015 political forum that the military will sponsor a major project to research coups conducted through mass protest – so called ‘color revolutions’ – to prevent a repeat of the situations that Russia faced in 1991 and 1993.
Possible ways and means of counteracting “soft power” and “color revolutions” have been on the agenda of the forum.
The forum concluded that the “color revolutions” are now taking form of armed brawls and are being developed under the rules of the art of war, which makes it necessary for the Defense Ministry to take part in methodological research.
The term "color revolutions" refers to coups instigated from the outside and characterized by widespread unrest in countries such as Georgia, Ukraine, Tunisia or Egypt.
They are believed to be conducted with the help of the United States and other Western countries, with the appointed leaders serving as a medium in advancing Western interests.
This phenomenon gave rise to another term, "the export of color revolutions." It denotes the Western support of opposition forces to influence domestic politics.
