(FINANCIAL TIMES) - For all Russia's efforts to develop an unconventional approach to conflict in the 21st century, its offensive against Ukraine has been carried out along brutal and decidedly old-fashioned lines: air strikes, heavy artillery and armoured vehicles attempting to pound its neighbour into submission.

Instead it is the West that is introducing a new and non-traditional means of fighting back, having been outsmarted for much of the past decade by Russia's expansion of the battlefield to incorporate cyber attacks, misinformation and "little green men" - masked troops with no insignia.