SPECIAL INFORMATION OPERATIONS IN THE SYSTEM OF MEANS OF COUNTERACTING THREATS TO NATIONAL SECURITY OF UKRAINE

This article analyzes the role and place of special information operations in the system of countering threats to the national security of Ukraine, which includes such groups of fixed assets (measures) to counteract traditional and new threats to national security: political and diplomatic; military; legal (legislative) information-psychological; economic; scientific and technological; organizational (administrative and procedural) physical; technical (hardware and software), etc. It has been determined that special information operations constitute an independent means of implementing information and psychological activities, and can also be considered as an auxiliary tool in implementing political, economic, military and other activities that, without proper information support, are doomed fail. At the same time, special information operations can be realized not only in providing information, but also other components of national security, which is a complex and multidimensional phenomenon. As an informational-legal phenomenon, special information operations are classified according to direction, aspects, types and so on, and are also characterized by an extensive range of methods that can be used during their implementation; therefore, the article examines a system of special information operations. In particular, special information operations as a means of countering threats to national security are characterized by two aspects — intelligence, which collects intelligence information about the enemy and exerts the necessary influence on him, and counterintelligence, related to the protection of the own information, information infrastructure and opposition to enemy's special information operations. The following special information operations can be classified by type: operations whose object (purpose) is a specific person or a certain circle of persons; operations aimed at initiating, changing the direction of development, termination or «blurring» of a certain process, phenomenon or event; «spin operations». By the form of the following special information operations can be identified: in the news area; in the communicative sphere; in the scientific and cultural field. Conducting special information operations both offensive and defensive re is characterized by an extensive system of methods, including, inter alia, electronic and electronic warfare methods, communication systems, cryptographic control methods, informational and psychological impact methods, «war of cultures», «hacker fight», methods of «cybernetic» or «network struggle», methods of economic informational confrontation, etc. In addition, the article also marks the perspective willow improvement of information- legal providing special information operations, which in the present conditions depend primarily on the formation of an appropriate legal basis for their implementation.