Undermining the collective capacity to resist: physical destruction and deportation of elites, disarmament, repression of the opposition, dismantling of autonomous institutions – the army, the church, self-government, education. The instruments of collective defense and self-organization are eroded.
| ID | Name | Description | |
| T0053 | Abduction of People | Aggressors may carry out covert or overt violent abductions of political leaders, civic activists, journalists, and ordinary members of the Indigenous people. In the active phase of a conflict, this technique serves the operational neutralization of defenses by physically eliminating potential organizers of resistance. In the long term, enforced disappearances are used to consolidate the occupation regime, as they create an atmosphere of unpredictable terror and paralyze the society's will to mount systematic protest. | |
| T0121 | Artificial Famine | Aggressors may artificially create conditions of mass famine through the forcible seizure of food, the destruction of agricultural infrastructure, and the blocking of escape routes. This form of indiscriminate terror physically exterminates the population, suppressing ongoing revolts, while simultaneously clearing the demographic landscape of the colonized territories. | |
| T0101 | Censorship | Aggressors may impose strict control over all forms of public expression, book printing, and mass media. Banning the publication of literature without the sanction of appointed censors, filtering information, and repressing independent authors allow the colonizer to monopolize the information space. This prevents the spread of dissent and ensures that the aggressor's state ideology is imposed on the colonized society without alternative. | |
| T0139 | Construction of Fortresses | Aggressors may build fortresses, ostrogs (stockaded forts), and chains of defensive lines (military lines) on the territories of Indigenous peoples. This infrastructure physically cuts the local population off from vital resources (for example, lowland pastures), blocks communications, and serves as a protected staging ground for the permanent stationing of occupation troops and the subsequent resettlement of colonists from the metropole. | |
| T0141 | Creation of Economic Hopelessness | Aggressors may deliberately create and maintain unbearable socio-economic conditions (acute land shortage, crushing obligations, destitution) in the historical territories of an Indigenous people. This is done to force the population to flee physical and social ruin. As a result, the people 'voluntarily-compulsorily' join the colonizer's militarized structures (for example, the Cossack host or the regular army) or migrate en masse to dangerous imperial frontiers to settle them. This technique allows the empire to accomplish its military and colonization objectives by proxy, disguising state coercion as the victims' own 'free economic choice.' | |
| T0127 | Deportation | Aggressors may resort to the forcible mass expulsion of Indigenous peoples from their historical territories to remote regions. This practice physically neutralizes the potential for local guerrilla or political struggle and destroys the social structure of the people, freeing up lands for subsequent settlement by settlers loyal to the colonizer. | |
| T0123 | Deprivation of Drinking Water | Aggressors may deliberately destroy water supply infrastructure (water utilities, pumping stations, dams) or physically block access to natural sources. Disabling this critical life-support system is used to create catastrophic sanitary and epidemiological conditions and to break the population's capacity for defense. | |
| T0124 | Deprivation of Electricity and Heating | Aggressors may systematically destroy energy infrastructure facilities, thermal power plants, and power transmission lines to create conditions incompatible with normal life. Mass deprivation of basic necessities serves as a form of collective punishment aimed at physically and psychologically breaking the society's will to resist. | |
| T0026 | Destruction of Local Media | Aggressors may carry out the physical destruction of editorial offices, the seizure or demolition of television and radio broadcasting centers, as well as targeted repression against independent journalists in occupied territories. Blocking channels of rapid public alert and eliminating objective sources of information prevents the colonized society from coordinating defensive actions and leaves it vulnerable to the colonizer's massive information-psychological operations. | |
| T0140 | Destruction of the Natural Landscape | Aggressors may deliberately alter or destroy the natural landscape of the target region (for example, by carrying out large-scale felling of centuries-old forests or destroying natural barriers). This is done to deprive the Indigenous people of natural cover, to prevent mobile guerrilla warfare, to seize resources needed for survival (firewood, building materials), and to completely destroy the traditional physical space. | |
| T0137 | Disinformation | Aggressors may carry out targeted manipulation of the information space and conduct malign influence operations (IO — Influence Operations, FIMI — Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference, FMI — Foreign Malign Influence). This technique is used for the coordinated injection of false narratives on the international stage, undermining trust in democratic institutions, and destabilizing the society of the victim state. Information interference is intended to distort the perception of reality, conceal the facts of aggression, and paralyze society's capacity for coordinated resistance. These techniques are covered in more detail in a specialized framework: DISARM Framework. | |
| T0108 | Economic Blockade | Aggressors may impose financial and trade restrictions, block bank transfers, and halt the operation of the Indigenous people's enterprises. This technique is used for preparation for seizure and neutralization of defenses. The artificial strangulation of the economy deprives the colonized society of the resources needed for self-sufficiency and defense, provoking an internal crisis and weakening institutions before the start of an open intervention or in the course of an active conflict. | |
| T0027 | Expulsion of Foreign Missions | Aggressors may forcibly remove independent international observers, human rights defenders, foreign diplomats, and journalists from the conflict territory. The expulsion of international missions makes it possible to create a dense information blockade, conceal the scale of crimes, and suppress any attempts at external oversight, depriving the victim of international protection. | |
| T0120 | Extermination Based on Identity | Aggressors may carry out the targeted physical extermination of people solely on the basis of their national, cultural, or political affiliation. Mass repressions, extrajudicial executions of the intelligentsia, and systematic terror pursue a dual goal: to immediately suppress active resistance and to preemptively eliminate the social base capable of preserving and transmitting the national code into the future. | |
| T0118 | Extermination on a Territorial Basis | Aggressors may carry out the physical extermination of a population not on the basis of the victims' political views or ethnicity, but totally — solely by virtue of their presence in a given territory. To wipe pockets of resistance off the face of the earth, carpet bombing of residential areas, deliberate mass shootings of residents, and other methods may be employed. | |
| T0028 | False Compromise / Entrapment | Aggressors may initiate sham peace negotiations, offer security guarantees, or declare humanitarian corridors solely for the purpose of deceiving the opponent. The use of diplomatic ruses and false promises allows the colonizer to lull the vigilance of the Indigenous people, compel them to lay down arms, abandon fortified positions, or move into open terrain, after which the agreements are treacherously violated and the resistance forces are subjected to destruction or capture. | |
| T0023 | Filtration Camp System | Aggressors may create a network of official or shadow temporary detention facilities for the mass screening, interrogation, and sorting of civilians. Isolating a significant part of the local population in closed zones not regulated by law allows the colonizer to identify and physically eliminate potential participants in resistance, as well as to carry out total psychological terror against the colonized society. | |
| T0049 | Forced Mobilization | Aggressors may forcibly conscript members of the Indigenous people into their own armed forces to take part in combat operations (including against their own compatriots). This technique is used to extract benefits by exploiting the local population as a free human resource. At the same time, it serves the purposes of neutralizing defenses: by sending men to distant fronts, the colonizer deliberately depletes the region's demographic and military potential, depriving the society of its capacity for self-defense. | |
| T0099 | Hostage-Taking | Aggressors may carry out the forcible capture and detention of civilians or non-combatants. These actions are used for the operational neutralization of defenses (blackmailing resistance forces, shielding troops). At the consolidation stage, this technique may become institutionalized as a system of taking members of the elites and high-ranking figures (the "amanat" system), whose detention serves as the state's guarantee of the local population's loyalty and of the prevention of anti-colonial revolts. | |
| T0025 | Information Isolation | Aggressors may block communication channels, independent media, and access to external sources of information. Creating an information vacuum ensures the neutralization of defenses by depriving the society of the ability to coordinate resistance, and also allows the aggressor to conceal the scale of the war crimes being committed. | |
| T0057 | Labor Exploitation | Aggressors may forcibly conscript the local population into heavy, dangerous, or unpaid labor in the interests of the metropole. This technique serves the direct extraction of benefits through the use of free or extremely cheap labor for the implementation of the colonizer's state megaprojects and military or industrial needs. At the same time, this practice is used for the neutralization of defenses: the removal of the able-bodied population from the region's economy and labor under conditions associated with high mortality physically exhaust the society and reduce its demographic potential. | |
| T0128 | Liquidation of National Civic Organizations | Aggressors may carry out the forced dissolution, prohibition, and criminalization of the activities of independent educational, cultural, scientific, and charitable societies of the indigenous people. In the acute phase, this technique is used to neutralize defenses, depriving society of legal structures for horizontal self-organization. In the long term, it serves to consolidate control, since the liquidation of national civic institutions makes the legal development of national culture and the formation of independent elites impossible. | |
| T0104 | Mass Killings of Civilians | Aggressors may carry out large-scale, targeted massacres of unarmed civilians. This form of radical terror is used to physically eliminate resistance (neutralization of defenses) and to achieve a rapid forcible seizure of governance over a territory by creating an atmosphere of total fear and paralyzing the will to defend. | |
| T0122 | Medical and Humanitarian Blockade | Aggressors may deliberately block civilians' access to medical services, medicines, and humanitarian aid, as well as attack hospitals and obstruct the work of rescue missions. This maximizes losses among civilians and the wounded, depleting the resources of the colonized society and suppressing its capacity for resistance. | |
| T0021 | Neutralization of the Opposition | Aggressors may carry out the systematic physical or political elimination of leaders, intelligentsia, and members of local elites who oppose colonization. Through mass arrests, extrajudicial executions, exile, and fabricated criminal cases, the colonizer liquidates the political leadership of an Indigenous people, paralyzing its capacity for coordination, organized struggle, and systemic resistance. | |
| T0138 | Nuclear Blackmail | Aggressors use the threat of nuclear weapons or create risks of a radiation disaster (through the military seizure of nuclear power plants). This is done to intimidate the international community, deter external assistance, and coerce the victim state into capitulation. | |
| T0152 | Pitting Neighboring Peoples Against Each Other |
The metropole deliberately sows and sustains enmity between neighboring Indigenous peoples so that they weaken one another and do not unite against it. Instead of confronting a united resistance, the colonizer divides it: it sets one people against another, arms and rewards the loyal against the defiant, and converts the shared hostility toward the empire into mutual discord among those being subjugated. The mechanism relies on already existing or artificially inflamed differences — clan-based, territorial, confessional — and entrenches them as a permanent line of division, depriving Indigenous peoples of the ability to act together. The metropole meanwhile preserves its own troops, shifting part of the suppression onto the incited side and presenting itself as an arbiter. Thus, General Gudovich, commander-in-chief in the Caucasus, directly formulated the objective with regard to Kabardians and Chechens — "to set these two peoples at odds with each other and bring them into enmity against one another, thereby weakening them over time" (1807); General Tormasov armed loyal Ingush and directed them against Chechens, rewarding them for attacks on them and for handing over captives (1810). |
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| T0148 | Predatory Raids | Aggressors may organize armed attacks on the settlements of an Indigenous people for the purpose of looting, seizing material valuables, driving off livestock, and taking civilians captive. This practice depletes the demographic and economic potential of the colonized society, deprives people of the resources needed for survival, and creates a zone of constant physical threat around the metropole's installations. For example, fortifications built by the regular army often became 'a base of operations for their raids on... Chechen auls, for looting and taking the local population captive'. | |
| T0077 | Punitive Expeditions | Aggressors may conduct targeted armed raids against the local population of settlements that offer resistance. During punitive expeditions, mass arrests, destruction of residential infrastructure, and demonstrative terror are carried out, which serves the immediate neutralization of defenses by physically suppressing pockets of resistance and intimidating the society. | |
| T0135 | Punitive Psychiatry | Aggressors may use the state psychiatric care system for political purposes to persecute, indefinitely isolate, and torture dissenters. Those who disagree with the regime (dissidents, human rights defenders, civic activists) have false diagnoses fabricated against them (for example, the nonexistent "sluggish schizophrenia"), after which they are forcibly confined to closed institutions. This technique allows the colonizer or a totalitarian system to neutralize resistance without formal judicial proceedings, subjecting victims to destructive medication regimes and stigmatizing opposition activity as a manifestation of insanity. | |
| T0142 | Restriction of Settlement Geography | Colonial authorities often impose legal or administrative bans on settling in places of traditional residence or on resettlement. This practice is used to prevent the Indigenous population from accessing resources important to the colonizers, e.g., rivers; to force the Indigenous population into emigration due to the absence of economic and social prospects and the high cost of housing; to create conditions for the migration of groups preferred by the empire to the new territories; and, finally, to reduce the capacity for organized resistance. | |
| T0022 | Terror | Aggressors may use systemic, demonstrative, and large-scale violence against the local population. This form of radical pressure is used to neutralize defenses in the active phase of a conflict and for the subsequent consolidation of the occupation regime. Carrying out mass extrajudicial executions, public reprisals, and torture is aimed at the total psychological breaking of the colonized society's will, the physical suppression of resistance, and coercion into unconditional submission. | |
| T0110 | Torture and Abuse | Aggressors may apply systematic physical and psychological violence against detained members of the local population, prisoners of war, and political activists. The use of brutal interrogations, beatings, and the creation of torturous conditions of detention serves not only the purposes of inquiry but also the total psychological breaking of the society's will, paralyzing its capacity for organized resistance. | |
| T0105 | Total Destruction of Infrastructure | Aggressors may carry out the deliberate, massive destruction of residential districts, industrial facilities, and life-support systems in the course of combat operations. The use of heavy weaponry to wipe entire settlements off the face of the earth deprives the Indigenous people of the ability to organize a defense and physically forces them to abandon or surrender the territory. | |
| T0107 | Transport Blockade | Aggressors may deliberately cut off air, rail, sea, and road connections with the target region. The physical isolation of the territory from the outside world allows the colonizer to paralyze the logistics of the Indigenous people, interrupt deliveries of vitally important goods, and deprive the society of the ability to receive external aid or coordinate its actions with allies. | |
| T0134 | Use as Cannon Fodder | Aggressors may use unarmed, untrained, or deliberately poorly equipped members of the colonized people (civilians or forcibly mobilized persons) for frontal assaults. This technique is used to directly and physically deplete the enemy's ammunition, reveal its concealed firing positions, and clear minefields with human bodies. Unlike the use of a "human shield" (T0111), where people serve as passive cover to protect the aggressor's troops, here the colonized population is actively used as free, single-use expendable material ("cannon fodder") to preserve the personnel reserve of the metropole's troops. | |
| T0111 | Use of People as “Human Shields” | Aggressors may forcibly use civilians, including women, children, and medical personnel, as physical cover for their military equipment and personnel. Placing unarmed members of the local population in front of advancing or retreating troops deprives the defending side of the ability to return fire due to the threat of mass death of its own fellow citizens, thereby paralyzing the resistance of the colonized society. | |