Originally published July 19, 2022
Preceding the war in Ukraine, Russia was typically evaluated as one of the most formidable military powers in the world. Global Firepower ranks Russia only slightly behind the US in capabilities and ahead of China, in the number two position worldwide. After three months of war in Ukraine in the largest conventional war in Europe since World War II, what have we learned about the state of the Russian military and what does it means for security in Europe and around the world?
Executive Summary
The Russian Federation has undertaken a massive military operation in Ukraine—the largest conventional war in Europe since World War II. Marking an end to soft power negotiation about the breakaway Donetsk republics, the campaign seems intended to weaken Ukraine’s military and prevent Ukraine from moving closer to NATO and the EU. So far, the war has resulted in renewed commitments to defense spending throughout NATO and a mobilization of weapons and sanctions against Russia.
Compared with wargames and planning scenarios, Russia used far less of its air power than expected. It has also lost many troops in Ukraine, along with millions of dollars worth of armored vehicles and aircraft. In a startling development in mid-April, it even lost its Black Sea flagship, the guided-missile cruiser Moskva to an apparent Ukrainian anti-ship missile attack. Russia also appears to have lost multiple senior officers to Ukrainian snipers and strikes.
For defense leaders, procurement professionals, and defense contractors, the conflict offers many preliminary takeaways:
For political leaders, the war also offers valuable insights:
Take measures to prevent conflict escalation in the Korean peninsula and between Armenia and Azerbaijan
Work to resolve frozen conflicts and stabilize or clarify the position of Georgia and Moldova
Defuse potential ethnic conflicts in Eastern Europe with an emphasis on the Baltic states and Bosnia-Herzegovina
How is the War in Ukraine Proceeding?
For now, the picture remains unclear about the extent of Russian combat losses, and the political and economic fallout of the war at home. Marine Corps University carried out a four-day wargame of a Russian invasion two weeks before the actual invasion began.[1] The wargame closely aligned with Russian opening moves, but did not anticipate subsequent Russian combat operations. Players anticipated that Russia would strike swiftly to destroy Ukraine’s air force with Kalibr and Kh-101 cruise missile strikes.
In the real world, Russia did attempt to strike Ukrainian S-300 anti-aircraft systems, but failed to eliminate Ukraine’s air force or scattered Buk SA-17 launchers. The wargame did correctly anticipate that Russia would attempt to encircle Kyiv and make its most dramatic progress on the ground, advancing from Crimea. The authors of an article profiling the wargame wrote:
During the wargame, there was a lot of discussion about the employment of information weapons, including cyber. It is therefore noteworthy that aside from Anonymous’ declaring cyber war on Russia, there is very little public reporting of actual cyberattacks by either side. Prior to the conflict one of the West’s great concerns was Russia’s much-vaunted cyber capabilities. So, either the Russians are holding a number of zero-day exploits in reserve, or it is time to closely examine how dangerous cyber operations truly are. Moreover, for all the heated talk about hybrid and grey zone warfare, this is a fight of blood and iron, in which Otto von Bismarck would have felt at home, something wargames are spectacularly good at simulating.
Other events in the wargame that have yet to come to pass in the real world include a Ukrainian incursion into Belarus or a pitched tank battle to break Russian lines near Kharkiv. Since April, Russia removed its forces in northern Ukraine and launched major offensives in the east. Although Kharkiv and Mykolaiv remain out of Russia’s grasp, the final removal of Ukrainian troops from Mariupol in mid-May has—for now—clinched Russian control of the entire coastline of the Sea of Azov. Protracted fighting throughout June has occurred along the lengthy eastern front in the Donbas, with Russian forces gaining full control of Sevierodonetsk in recent days. Russia has consolidated its positions in the vicinity of Kherson and is preparing its assault on Lysychansk, the last remaining Ukrainian held city in the Luhansk Oblast.
Areas of Weakness for the Russian Military
Command and control and logistics are two of the Russian military’s greatest strategic weaknesses. Throughout much of Russian and Soviet history, decision making was highly centralized to Moscow. Commentators in the current war have made much of the death of five Russian generals in Ukraine, as a sign of weak morale among Russian troops. This evaluation may be correct. There is a certain moral value to “leading from the front” but losing senior commanders also sets back any fighting force, forcing successors to become familiarized with their new command as fast as possible.
Russian military logistics appears more reliant on rail transportation than the American armed forces, which rely much more on truck transport.[1] In the context of Ukraine, this has slowed the advance into Ukraine and makes redeployment challenging.
Going back to the early 1980s, the US has relied heavily on systems like the M1 Abrams that lack long-range diesel capabilities. Russia’s armored units have a considerable range with diesel, but the length of the deployment in Ukraine has still strained fuel supplies.
Weighed against peer militaries like the US, China, and India, or many of the major European militaries, the Russian military is nearly as experienced as the US military, with recent combat experiences in Syria, Georgia, and Chechnya. Syria and Georgia in particular offered a dry run for the kind of expeditionary capabilities on display in Ukraine. Nevertheless, Russia’s engagements have tended to be smaller in scale and closer to home than those of the US and UK, with extended engagements in Afghanistan and Iraq. Although it is now 19 years since the US attempted an operation on the scale of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, when it invaded Iraq, the continued engagements up to the 2021 Afghanistan withdrawal provided large amounts of experience in managing complex logistics.
Compared with its NATO opponents, Russia also lags in some naval and aviation capabilities. Even with improved Borei-class submarines, it lacks the massive combined fleets—with large numbers of aircraft carriers and amphibious warfare ships—that the US, UK, France, and even smaller powers like Italy and Spain can put to sea. Similarly, Russian aircraft are highly capable if slightly less numerous than the combined totals of NATO nations.
The US is well known for the high costs of its military and the seemingly gold plated payouts awarded to defense contractors. Russia’s military—like the country as a whole—suffers from the effects of corruption.[2] Data is lacking about the extent of corruption in the old Soviet military. However, Russian auditing in the 1990s and early 2000s suggests corruption totaled $11.5 billion US.[3] Corruption in the early 21st century took the form of (1) diverting funds for arms procurement, (2) exaggerating troop numbers, and (3) overpaying civilian contractors for goods and services.[4] Russian forces in the 1990s routinely sold fuel to private citizens—or even more dramatically sound weapons to the Chechen resistance.
Areas of Strength for the Russian Military
Although Russia’s current population is more than 100 million people fewer than at the peak population of the Soviet Union, it is much cohesive around an ethnically and linguistically Russian national identity. Apart from a few areas like Ukraine that slipped away from Moscow’s control, most of the former Soviet Union is still closely bound to the Kremlin. Hundreds of thousands of Central Asians work in Russia[5] and both Belarus and the Central Asian states depend on Russia for trade and security guarantees.
Western commentators commonly remark that Russia’s economy is smaller than that of Canada. On paper, that is certainly true, but it fails to capture key facts about Russia. Much of the GDP—by some accounts over half—in many Western countries is financial instruments. These are doubtless “real” economic activity, but when the chips are down, Russia punches far above its weight in industrial capacity, energy, and agricultural output.
Russia possesses some of the largest stockpiles of tanks and artillery in the world. It has the world’s largest inventory of nuclear weapons, and unlike the US, UK, and France, has continued to innovate with new weapons like Topol missiles and ultra-long range Sarmat-2s.[6] Russia possesses the world’s most sophisticated air defense system[7], even if the raw number of aircraft that it fields is somewhat less than the US and its allies.
Together with deep domestic reserves, Russia has a largely friendly neighborhood. Kazakhstan, Armenia, Turkmenistan, and Tajikistan all possess capable militaries aligned with Russia through the CSTO, and the populace of many former Soviet countries—like Kyrgyzstan—speaks Russian. Unlike in the 1970s and 1980s when China and the Soviet Union were at loggerheads following the Sino-Soviet split, Russia does not need to worry much about a conflict with China in the short run, particularly as Russia becomes China’s supplier for gas, grain—and nuclear protection.
Above all, Russia is willing to sacrifice its service members in ways that are politically untenable for Western countries.
Similarities and Differences with the Cold War
The centrality of nuclear weapons in the Cold War is hard to ignore. The omnipresent threat of global thermonuclear war hung over all public policy and defined the US-Soviet relationship. Both sides prepared for massive conventional wars. This took the form of US anticipation of a new Battle of the Atlantic as it raced to resupply Western Europe with tanks, troops, food, and fuel. For its part, the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies rehearsed massive land invasions of Western, Northern, and Southern Europe. In Central Europe, NATO planned to counter the Soviet “Seven Days to the Rhine” plan with massive tank battles on the North German Plain and in the Fulda Gap, and the use of tactical nuclear weapons.[8] Every country in Western Europe retained large (and often conscript) militaries into the mid-1990s.
Both sides anticipated that the other would rapidly escalate to nuclear war. Nonetheless, scenarios did not typically explain why such a war had broken out. Massive confrontations loomed several times: the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961, the 1962 Cuban Missile crisis, the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, the 1973 Yom Kippur War, and misunderstandings about the Able Archer Exercise in 1983.[9] Reflecting on the Cold War legacy, it seems likely that a large scale land war cum nuclear war might have broken out simply in an effort to preempt a perceived attack by the other side.
Although it bears some resemblance to old Soviet “deep battle” plans in Central Europe or Turkey and Iran, the ongoing war in Ukraine is different from the Cold War in key ways. This is the biggest test of the reformed, updated, and strengthened Russian military, with the investment of the 2010s and—supposedly—the lessons learned from Chechnya, Georgia, Syria, and the War in Donbas. The Russian military struck with forces larger than any seen in operation in Europe in the past 75 years (surpassing the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 and the Yugoslav wars in the 1990s), but still far fewer than the Gulf War Coalition fielded in 1991.
It seems likely that both sides in the conflict have committed war crimes. Certainly the Russian decision to obliterate Mariupol with artillery, or reported massacres in Bucha[10], are deeply unfortunate outcomes to the war. Nonetheless, Russia has shown remarkable restraint compared to its use of force against its own citizens in Chechnya. Russian strikes have hardly touched central Kiev, Russian forces seem to have used comparatively little repression against citizens in occupied areas although crackdowns have certainly occurred, and Russia has made extensive use of guided missiles to strike strategic targets. Above all, Russia has not extensively deployed thermobaric bombs on the battlefield—or made other use of weapons of mass destruction.
How the war resolves will determine much of how Russia adapts its armed forces going forward. As a more open country than the old Soviet Union, Russia may discover that it needs to consider morale more than it once did as word about the war filters in the from the outside world and casualties mount. Perhaps it will return to old plans for deep battle on a smaller front, drawing yellowed pages from still secret archives in Moscow. Or Russia may revert to tried and true strategies like espionage and subterfuge. Western countries benefit from open societies, but have plenty of ethnic, religious, racial, and ideological groups with potential grievances.
With these concerns in-mind, it is imperative for Western governments to avoid hamhanded crackdowns on their own far-left, far-right, immigrant, and minority communities. These imperatives are especially important in context of the Russian-speaking community in the Baltic countries. Additionally, given the explosive potential of the Balkans, Western governments need to get out ahead of the brewing nationalist sentiments in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Compared with the last 20 years of the Cold War, Russia is at liberty to concentrate its forces on Europe. Belarus, Iran, Turkey, Kazakhstan, and China are all “friendly” countries. This means that the potential flashpoints for conflict are different than they once were. Instead of the Yalu River, West Berlin, or central Germany, today’s strategic planners should look to the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad.[11] To avoid provocation, the region must be given ready access to food and fuel. In the Caucasus, Georgia’s situation remains unresolved and new strategic plans may need to be considered to ensure Georgia’s sovereignty without provoking a Russian intervention there.
Apart from the Gulf States, Azerbaijan and Armenia are two of the most heavily militarized countries. A short but bloody war in 2020 reignited the smoldering Nagorno-Karabakh conflict of the 1990s. Armenia and Azerbaijan both buy weaponry from Russia, although Azerbaijan has independent cultural alignments with both Iran and Turkey. If this conflict reignites, the complex strategic relations in the region may entangle Western countries in ways that are difficult to anticipate.
Responding to Russia Today
Russia has undertaken a complex military endeavor even more ambitious than the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, and with only modestly more forces. Its campaign in northeastern Ukraine quickly bogged down around Kharkiv and forestalled a rapid victory, leaving Russian forces active but somewhat disorganized throughout parts of the country.
History suggests that Russian military doctrine will not change quickly and Russia has already lost valuable equipment in Ukraine. Nevertheless, Russia may adapt to circumstances and attempt to implement more flexible forces like its Western opponents—a pattern that some analysts already see happening.
Western policymakers, military leaders, and defense contractors must all evaluate countermeasures to safeguard vulnerable geographies. Moldova has rapidly moved to align itself with the EU and NATO. Georgia will likely remain paralyzed by its twin breakaway regions. Serbia has the potential to become a valuable partner in future European defense procurement. Aligned both with Russia and the EU, Serbia has a vibrant defense industry that uses clever technological workarounds to solve problems.
If credible concerns remain that future Russia aggression will isolate the Baltic states, NATO could invest in fixed barriers akin to the Kuwait-Iraq border[12]—deploying tank traps, trenches, and artillery in key areas like the Suwalki Gap to prevent armored invasion. Similar defenses could be deployed within Ukraine when a peace agreement is reached.
Most likely, planners have already drafted many different scenarios for a conflict with Russia in Eastern Europe. Such plans need to be continually revised and developed with military exercises and wargaming. Unlike wargames of the past, today’s wargames should encompass new stakeholders from elsewhere in industry and government: logisticians, cybersecurity professionals, ferry operators, airlines, and railroads.
For military planners and defense contractors, there will likely be significant opportunities to develop new programs to counter Russian aggression. The fact that Russian forces have faced significant losses due to MANPADS[13] and anti-tank missiles means that those same weapons could be used against NATO forces. New countermeasures are likely needed to protect armored vehicles and aircraft. Planners can focus on lower cost guided missile systems and more readily deployable anti-aircraft systems to harden Eastern Europe against conflict.
Independent assessments suggest that most European militaries currently field so few tanks that there is little ability to procure replacement parts for these vehicles. In addition to careful logistical planning, NATO militaries could pre-position fuel and parts in vulnerable portions of Eastern Europe.
Conclusions
The Russian invasion of Ukraine is a deeply unfortunate development for European regional security. The conflict serves as an important test case for modern war concepts and offers policymakers insights about the preparedness of Russia’s armed forces and the validity of current tactics and doctrines. Additionally, the conflict highlights the growing role of drones and surveillance technology, the importance of strong air defense, the difficulties of waging a large-scale conventional war, the potency of small anti-tank missiles, and the shift toward a contemporary form of traditional great power warfare.
References [1] James Lacey, et al., The Wargame Before the War: Russia Attacks Ukraine, War on the Rocks, (March 2, 2022), https://warontherocks.com/2022/03/the-wargame-before-the-war-russia-attacks-ukraine/. [1] Marc Champion, “How Ukraine’s rail network threw Russia’s military off track,” Japan Times, (March 5, 2022), https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2022/03/05/world/russia-military-ukraine-railroad/. [2] Tor Bukkvoll, Their Hands in the Till: Scale and Causes of Russian Military Corruption, 34(2) Armed Forces & Society 259, 259 (2008). [3] Tor Bukkvoll, Their Hands in the Till: Scale and Causes of Russian Military Corruption, 34(2) Armed Forces & Society 259, 260 (2008). [4] Tor Bukkvoll, Their Hands in the Till: Scale and Causes of Russian Military Corruption, 34(2) Armed Forces & Society 259, 261 (2008). [5] “Central Asian Migration to Russia,” Voices on Central Asia, (Feb. 18, 2021), https://voicesoncentralasia.org/central-asian-migration-to-russia-legalization-in-2020/. [6] See generally “Russia’s Nuclear Weapons: Doctrine, Forces, and Modernization,” Congressional Research Service, (March 21, 2022), https://sgp.fas.org/crs/nuke/R45861.pdf. [7] “Russian Air and Missile Defense,” CSIS, (Aug. 3, 2021), https://missilethreat.csis.org/system/russian-air-defense/. [8] See generally Zabecki, David T., Dieter. Krüger, and J. Hoffenaar. Blueprints for Battle Planning for War in Central Europe, 1948-1968. Lexington, Ky: University Press of Kentucky, 2012. [9] “Nuclear Close Calls: Able Archer 83,” Atomic Heritage, (Jun. 15, 2018), https://www.atomicheritage.org/history/nuclear-close-calls-able-archer-83. [10] “Bucha killings: Satellite image of bodies site contradicts Russian claims,” BBC, (April 5, 2022), https://www.bbc.com/news/60981238. [11] See generally Viljar Veebel & Zdzislaw Sliwa, The Suwalki Gap, Kaliningrad and Russia’s Baltic Ambitions, Scandinavian Journal of Military Studies, 2(1), 111–121, (2019), http://doi.org/10.31374/sjms.21. [12] See “The Berm,” Global Security, (2007), https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/gulf/kuwait-the-berm.htm. [13] See generally Matt Schroeder, “Countering the MANPADS Threat: Strategies for Success,” Arms Control Today, (2022), https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2007-09/features/countering-manpads-threat-strategies-success.
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