The headline of the article called these people cyber activists, and in the text of the article, they were called cybercriminals. Which is it? It reminds me a bit with the situation with privateers during the age of sail. These were often people operating at the edge of the law, or even outright outlaws, given a letter of marque, a license to raid warships and commerce against a specific adversary. I'm sure out on the high seas, abuses happen.
The people who put together the doctrine on 4th Generation Warfare talked about the blurring of civilian and military. Rules of engagement gets fuzzier.
Russians are kiling civilians with drones each day. I don't think this is some gray area hybrid warfare, it's just regular people not wanting drones to kill their neighbours.
> Russians are kiling civilians with drones each day.
Same do Ukrainians, don't they? More over, long before they killed civilians and defenders in Iraq and Afghanistan on Americans invitation. Then left without even saying 'sorry'. Since 2014 they were shelling Donetsk just for fun, killing people at random. So, it's more complicated than you'll find in western mass media. Especially in EU where full picture is illegal.
> Ukrainians have not and do not deliberately target civilians
There news on Russian side daily of Ukrainians doing exactly this, deliberately targeting civilians. Also usually their own non-combatants who are trying to surrender. This is war crime.
There are dirty tactics in this war which western public will learn about later. For now it's given a rosy optimistic picture approved by Zelinsky office. That's how 'Support Ukraine' is pushed on them. In fact it's 'support the war', as Ukrainians are dying in big numbers. By the way, official number of civilians killed 3 years is lower that in Gaza in 3 months.
Whatever, that's doesn't justify shelling a city. BTW, it's considered Ukrainian territory and those civilians killed by Ukrainian military were Ukrainians. However it was supported by the government up to and including Zelinsky, and by the majority of 'true Ukrainians'. Nobody was prosecuted.
It seems like it might be a translation issue. The site seems pretty overtly pro Ukraine, so they probably don't want to cast these hackers in a negative light. They might have just thought "cyber criminal" was a straight synonym for "hacker".
Kind of a Robin Hood situation: Hero for some, criminal to the others.
The article might be a collage of several other articles, and they didn't check for consistency.
I would love some other term for the aligned side people in cyberwarfare, sort of "cybersoldier" or "networkmilitia", not already somehow cliched in some film. "Cyberactivists" sounds like online protesters (in facebook and such)
The people who put together the doctrine on 4th Generation Warfare talked about the blurring of civilian and military. Rules of engagement gets fuzzier.