John A. Warden III is one of the leading contemporary air force theorists in the modern era. Warden´s five ring model has proved the ability to explain other dimensions of warfare, as Warden himself claims. A topic that had been receiving much attention is the relatively new arena of warfare, the so-called 'cyberspace'. This dimension has enabled the dissemination of information at a significantly higher rate than before which results that the efficiency of information warfare have increased. Previous research in this complex area, where a combination of Warden's theories and information warfare have been used to analyze a case, is currently inadequate. Therefore, this case study intends to examine to which extent Warden's five ring model can be applied on information operations, in the context of the war in Ukraine. The result in this thesis will show that Warden's theory had a certain degree of explanatory power on the information operations, that were conducted in Ukraine during 2013-2014. The result will also indicate that the most significant direct impact from information operations was shown on the fourth ring, population. When the fourth ring was affected, the effect would spread and affect other rings indirectly. Attempts to affect multiple rings directly and simultaneously could not be identified except for the fourth and fifth rings, population and fielded military. However, no traceability of a direct impact on the fifth ring, fielded military, was identified.

According to NATO Review, in 2013 it was estimated that over 97% of the world's telecommunications were transmitted via the internet and that this was a growing trend. This essentiality for communication means that information systems have become a natural target and point of attack in military actions and planning. This thesis aims to test the possibility to apply the theory of The enemy as a system and the concentric five-ring modeldeveloped by air force theorist Jon A. Warden III, to the cyber arena. To achieve this aim, the thesis presents a qualitative text analysis of seven different sources describing NotPetya. The targets and effects of the cyber attack are evaluated based upon the concentric five-ring model and the concept of parallel attack. The results of the analysis shows that Warden's theory is highly applicable to the case of NotPetya. This in turn could point to the theory’s applicability to the cyber domain and to strategic operations in cyberspace. However no major conclusions of generalizability can be drawn.