First in Ukraine came "hybrid" war, a conflict where it wasn't clear who was fighting.

Now follows hybrid peace, a ceasefire where it's just as unclear who isn't fighting.

A deal, of sorts, was last week struck in the Belarus capital Minsk to stop the bloodshed in south-eastern Ukraine. It's holding too, for now.

One of those watching most closely to see it stays that way is Lt General Ben Hodges.

But hybrid wars are waged through proxies, through propaganda and soft power. So I had a question for Lt Gen Hodges: how do you know who is ultimately responsible for ending them?

"The Russians are fighting their 'ambiguous' hybrid war, we are all grappling for a name for it," Lt Gen Hodges told me.

That, he says, means you have to look to both proxies on the ground and figures way beyond the front line to ensure peace.

"When you have unprofessional military or paramilitary organisations, the chance is there of some indiscipline," he told me by phone from Germany.

"On the other hand, at Minsk you have Russian President Vladimir Putin standing there, but the signatories are the rebel leaders.

"That implies an endorsement and a degree of control.

"There is Russian equipment in the field; there has to be command and control that goes with this."

The presence of Russian soldiers on Ukrainian soil is denied by Russia, of course. But at least these men will obey orders.

Can the same be said of volunteers on both sides? And crooks on the make?

This scares me. I think the trouble with ambiguous war is that the ambiguity can go both ways.

How? Well, in my view there is a real danger that a nationalist hothead or a gangland figure with a stake in instability forces the hands of planners in Moscow. Or even Brussels. The tail may wag the dog.

One picture last week summed this up for me. It showed pro-Kiev fighter armed with an automatic weapon but wearing a blue-and-yellow Ukraine football tracksuit top in place of military fatigues.

This hardly inspires notions of reliable command. Can people like this keep the real heat out of what some are calling a new Cold War?

Lt Gen Hodges reckons President Putin knows how to keep things just off the boil. He said: "He can take the temperature up to 99 degrees as long as he does not go above 100 degrees.

"Putin knows that he needs to stay below that article 5 threshold, when Nato would have to respond to an attack on on of its members.

"But it is still not entirely clear what constitutes an 'Article 5'. Does a cyber attack? Does an attempt to crush the economy in a Nato country? Most people would say No. So Putin will just do things that keep that ambiguity going."

Ukraine is heading to be one of several unresolved "frozen" conflicts on Russia's fringes. Let's hope nobody raises the temperature on it again; because a hybrid peace is still peace.