When was the last time you saw Ukraine on the front page of a newspaper? It’s been a while. Ukraine signed a deal with the West, and its army seems to be getting the eastern districts under control. It seems like everything’s calming down.

With Russia involved, we can’t take that for granted. Even if it is true, Russia’s war with the West will go on, but in a much subtler form.

“In the 21st century we have seen a tendency toward blurring the lines between the states of war and peace,” Russian Chief of General Staff Valery Gerasimov wrote in the Voyenno Promyshlennyy Kuryer (Military-Industrial Courier) last year. “Wars are no longer declared and, having begun, proceed according to an unfamiliar template.”

Gerasimov’s article, translated by Robert Coalson of Radio Free Europe and published by the clinical professor of global affairs at the Center for Global Affairs at New York University, Dr. Mark Galeotti, on his blog In Moscow’s Shadows, is one of several pieces written by Russian experts that demonstrate Russia’s new thinking on warfare.

This new warfare is not a matter for soldiers alone. In traditional thinking, you are either at war or at peace with an enemy nation. In the new Russian doctrine, if complete peace is represented by the color white and all-out war by black, then between lies nearly an infinite number of shades of gray.

“The very ‘rules of war’ have changed,” Gerasimov wrote. “The role of nonmilitary means of achieving political and strategic goals has grown, and, in many cases, they have exceeded the power of force of weapons in their effectiveness.” He continued (emphasis added throughout):

The focus of applied methods of conflict has altered in the direction of the broad use of political, economic, informational, humanitarian, and other nonmilitary measures—applied in coordination with the protest potential of the population.All this is supplemented by military means of a concealed character, including carrying out actions of informational conflict and the actions of special-operations forces. The open use of forces—often under the guise of peacekeeping and crisis regulation—is resorted to only at a certain stage, primarily for the achievement of final success in the conflict.

This is exactly what we saw in Crimea and Ukraine. Russian-controlled tv blared out the constant message that the new government in Kiev was packed with Nazis. Then Russia used special forces in disguise to take over the Crimean Peninsula, catching the West by surprise. This led to the rigged referendum and eventual annexation of Crimea into Russia.

The core of Gerasimov’s message is that Russia must use every means it can find to fight these new kinds of battle. “In conclusion, I would like to say that no matter what forces the enemy has, no matter how well-developed his forces and means of armed conflict may be, forms and methods for overcoming them can be found,” he wrote. “He will always have vulnerabilities and that means that adequate means of opposing him exist.”

This is not a one-off article from Gerasimov. Just a few days ago, the same Russian military paper carried another article, this time by retired Major-General Vasily Burenok, president of the Russian Academy of Missile and Artillery Sciences. Burenok’s theme is communication as a weapon for Russia.

Discussing the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (darpa’s) 2015 program, Burenok writes that darpa is “well aware” that “information is becoming a source of pressure and domination,” according to a translation included in the article published in the Eurasia Daily Monitor.

“Modern political scientists armed with informatics tools can actively shape public opinion to manipulate the mind,” he wrote, noting that a successful nation brings stability through the “skillful manipulation of the perception of events.”

News and information, to Russia, is a major tool in its latest form of warfare.

We saw this in Ukraine, where Russia whipped those who relied on Russian-tv stations for their news into a paranoid frenzy about the so-called “Nazi-Junta” in Kiev.

At the same time, RT (formerly Russia Today) did its best as Russia’s key weapon in taking this media war to the West. Part of the state-owned news organization ria Novosti, RT is Russia’s “best propaganda machine for the outside world” according to former Putin adviser Andrei Illarionov. It pours out a form of mental poison, where everything it writes is either true, or nearly true, but often with key facts omitted, and always with a subtle spin that makes Russia the saint and the West the source of all evil. It frequently hosts anti-American conspiracy theorists, giving them free rein to pour out their mixture of truth and error.

Prolonged exposure produces a thoroughly warped understanding of world events. (Of course, Western media have their biases too, but they’re not government-run as part of the nation’s war effort—their biases run in other directions.) As Lithuanian Minister for Foreign Affairs Linas Linkevicius put it, the “Russia Today propaganda machine is no less destructive than military marching in Crimea.”

The discovery that Russia was paying people to leave pro-Russian comments on news websites revealed another part of this effort. Social media has become a battle ground between pro- and anti-Ukraine bloggers—though the pro-Ukraine writers tend to be genuine nationalists, while some of Russia’s are a more formal part of the war effort. It is all designed to undermine support for any robust action against Russia in the West.

The Russian Othodox Church, as Jeremiah Jacques recently covered, is also part of the war effort, with its leader, Kirill i, reportedly a former kgb agent. It’s another way for Russia to “manipulate the mind” of its near neighbors. So in Ukraine, we see a religious war going on too. Many of the Ukrainian nationalists split away from the Moscow-controlled Russian Orthodox Church in the ’90s. Now, even the branch that remains may break away.

At a higher level, Russia carries on the same warfare using its business contacts and lobbyists. Russia makes it clear to any company that wants to trade with Russia that it will lose out badly if sanctions are bad or if relations between Russia and its country deteriorate too much. Individuals that benefit from Russian business are also mobilized to fight for Russia.

Oil and gas have long been blackmail and coercion tools in this warfare. Stratfor’s Robert Kaplan reported that Romanian President Traian Basescu recently told him that in the 21st century, Gazprom is more dangerous than the Russian Army.

This is Russia’s new kind of warfare. “The soldiers of this war are spies and criminals, cynical lobbyists and gullible commentators, businesses desperate to make a profit from Russia and populations eager not to see themselves engaged in any civilizational struggle,” Dr. Galeotti wrote.

One of the names this new type of Russian warfare has been given is “nonlinear war,” after a phrase one of Putin’s closest advisers, Vladislav Surkov, used in a short story he published on March 12 as Russia took over Crimea.

“It was the first nonlinear war,” he wrote, in his science fiction piece. “In the primitive wars of the 19th and 20th centuries, it was common for just two sides to fight. Two countries. Two groups of allies. Now four coalitions collided. Not two against two, or three against one. No. All against all.”

“And what coalitions!” he continues. “Not like the ones you had before… It was rare for whole countries to enter. A few provinces would join one side, a few others a different one. One town or generation or gender would join yet another. Then they could switch sides, sometimes mid-battle.”

It is possible to read too much into Surkov’s short story, but this is part of what Russia’s new warfare tries to do—turn as many parts of the enemy against him as possible.

Kaplan’s interviews with government officials in Romania and Moldova show that these countries are aware, and fearful, of this new nonlinear war.

nato’s commitment to collective defense “protects Romanian and other Eastern European countries against a military invasion,” Romania’s presidential national security adviser, Iulian Fota, told Kaplan, “but it does not protect them against subversion.”

A more local leader, county council president of Iasi in Eastern Romania, Cristian Mihai Adomnitei, articulated the nation’s fear best: “In his heart, [Putin] is a Bolshevik,” he told Kaplan. “He knows that you can conquer vast territories without big armies.”

Across the border in Moldova, another local politician, Cecilia Graur, told Kaplan that “everyone is afraid. The situation in eastern Ukraine could happen here. We all know this because of our own divisions.”

In Moldova, Russia can bring all these features of nonlinear warfare to bear. Their economy is heavily dependent on Russia. They buy their gas from Russia. Corruption is widespread. Several breakaway minorities are ready to call out to Russia for help. There are even Russian “peacekeeping” soldiers in a breakaway part of Moldova. No wonder Kaplan concluded his piece by writing: “I fear for Moldova.”

Of course, much of this “new” kind of warfare is not really new—almost all the aspects it includes have long existed. Russia has used many of these tactics for years. Maybe the recent articles in Russia’s military press are more of an attempt by the military to take control of Russia’s already existing nonlinear warfare than to introduce a new concept.

Perhaps the most successful practitioner of many of its tenants was the Kaiserreich, the Germany of World War i. During the war, it helped Hindu terrorists attempt to launch an uprising against the British in India, and tried to lead the Muslims on a holy war against the British Empire—with the Kaiser even pretending to have converted to Islam. It helped distribute propaganda to support both these causes.

These efforts proved disappointing, but its most successful stroke came in 1917, when it allowed a Russian revolutionary named Vladimir Lenin to travel from Switzerland to Russia through Germany, and even funded his mission. In the upheaval of the Russian Revolution, Lenin took control of Russia and his government surrendered to Germany, ceding 1.3 million square miles of territory—a huge chunk of Russia’s most valuable territory and 2.5 percent of the Earth’s total land area.

On these occasions, Germany was officially at war with the powers it unleashed its nonlinear warfare against. But it shows Europe is familiar with the techniques involved, and the potential it holds.

But Western media isn’t. Or rather, Western readers, especially in America, aren’t interested. “Moldova” and “Transnistria” are merely foreign sounding words. Articles on the spread of Russian influence in Eastern Europe are page-turners only in the sense that they cause many readers to turn the page without reading anything more.

And so, assuming Ukraine continues to quiet down, war with Russia will disappear from our news. But that war is not over. Instead, Russia will be using more subtle means to bring down its opponents. As General Gerasimov wrote, “The open use of forces … is resorted to only at a certain stage, primarily for the achievement of final success in the conflict.” Until that stage is reached, American media won’t be interested.

Of course, America does some of this well. But Dr. Galeotti compiled a good list of the differences between Russia’s nonlinear war and America’s:

First of all, the Kremlin appears far more conscious and strategic about its play. Although I do not believe there is some grand plan, some long-term design sitting in a file in Putin’s desk, complete with “Russia’s 2020 boundaries” inked in red, there clearly is a sharper sense of what the Kremlin wants to happen tomorrow and the day after. … There is a stronger sense of the ideological and practical direction of policy than the West—and above all the United States—appears willing or, given the vicissitudes of democratic politics, able to develop.Secondly, this is a more clearly self-interested policy. To greater or lesser extents, the West is perennially torn between a genuinely moral geopolitical stance, which regards spreading democracy, ending wars and socioeconomic development as “good things” in their own right, and also national pragmatism, often cloaked in that idealistic mission. Often, you can find these contradictions within the very same agency. … Although the Kremlin is not entirely pragmatic … it is certainly uninhibited by any need to worry about doing good.Finally, Russia is just especially good at this “special war.” Dirty tricks and covert operations have been around as long as history, and the West has a good number of successes of its own, such as the Stuxnet virus attack on Iran’s nuclear centrifuges. However, at a time when the U.S. intelligence community appears torn between paramilitarization and a dependence on electronic means, Russia’s capacity to blend direct “kinetic action” with propaganda, economic pressure, espionage and bribery, combined with a clearer-eyed ruthlessness, means that, to use one of the British Foreign Office’s favored terms, it can “punch well above its weight.”

So Russia will continue to fight. Gas pipelines in Bulgaria, a presidential visit to Austria, and fighter jets in Iraq are different parts of this war effort. Central and Eastern Europe will continue to feel the pressure from Russia—and Europe will continue to respond to that pressure. This will linger until Europe is forced to form a united front against Russia. That won’t be easy, but it will be the only way to defeat the divide-and-conquer tactics of Russia’s nonlinear war.

In this way, Russia’s warfare will continue to reshape Europe in weeks and months ahead.