The article examines the war as a means of political crime and threat to national security: the psychological and criminological aspect. It is emphasised that when studying the determinants of crime, attention should be focused on determining their current state, which is interrelated with certain changes in Ukrainian society and interaction (political, economic, social, cultural, etc.) with other states. The patterns of development of social relations and international legal relations are significantly interrelated. This implies both modernisation of national legislation and relevant amendments to the country's Constitution. Reform of social and legal control over crime, as well as a systematically coordinated mechanism of subjective prevention and counteraction to it, is also required. The author shows that war is an extreme situation which affects the life of a person, society, the State, and, in a generalised sense, the national security of the State. The basis of this means to achieve the end is violence as a result of socio-political activities of a number of individuals (politicians, parties, movements, regional communities, etc.) or the State authorities, which aims to undermine socio-political stability in another State, economic progress, and the socio-cultural level of the population. Such activities acquire the characteristics of political crime. The perpetrators of political crime are criminally liable not for their political views, but for the criminal offence committed.   Political crime is a socially threatening form of action by the ruling elite against opposition forces and individuals in the struggle for power or retention of power through violence, bribery, ideological manipulation, etc. It manifests itself in the following forms: 1) internal - political crimes of the government against its people; 2) international - criminal offences against the government itself (crimes against the national security of the state, terrorist acts); 3) international. The motive is to protect their power, ideology, way of life by means of encroachment of groups of citizens, single or mixed in nationality, on persons in the territory of another country. This can be done both ideologically and militarily (changing the boundaries of a territory or state border; opposition to a democratically elected government; violation of the law and order established by the Constitution). It is substantiated that counteraction to political crime causing military conflicts (hybrid wars) should be defined at the systemic level, elaborated and methodologically and methodically described with a view to implementing prevention and counteraction measures by the relevant actors not only in a particular State, region, but also in the world community. Such decisions should be made on the basis of objective and systematic information about a particular crime obtained through criminological management, statistical, sociological, psychological and other empirical data. Statistical and sociological data coming from global, national, regional units should be viewed through the prism of the social nature of criminogenic phenomena, which will help determine their effectiveness