Resources for an endless war? (In Russian)

With Pavel Luzin, Visiting Scholar of the Russia and Eurasia Program at The Fletcher School

During the first 7 months of the suicidal war, the Russian army was actually defeated. This forced the Putin regime to move towards mass mobilization. But the training of the mobilized is weak, and the army cannot supply them with equipment and weapons. Authoritarian mobilization (unlike republican mobilization, as in Ukraine, when people voluntarily defend their country) does not allow replacing retired formations with combat-ready ones. Therefore, Russia’s attacks have become more aggressive: it has moved on to destroying the infrastructure of Ukrainian cities.

However, this requires a lot of missiles. Their lack leads the Russian army to use Hamas tactics: stockpile missiles, strike cities for intimidation (terror that cannot break the will of the enemy to resist), and stockpile missiles again. Russia is poorly prepared for an air campaign: during the 8 months of the war, the Russian Aerospace Forces used more than 7,000 guided bombs and cruise missiles against Ukraine (against Iraq in 2003, the aviation of the international coalition fired 16,000 missiles and bombs in 1 month).

Does Russia have weapons and military equipment to conduct a long military campaign? Can the military-industrial complex be reoriented to a multiple increase in the production of weapons and military equipment? Will the sharply increased military expenditures of the budget be enough for this? Will disagreements between different Russian military formations prevent Russia from conducting the war? How will the inclusion of tens of thousands of mobilized in the war change the situation on the battlefield? What does mobilization mean for domestic politics: will it undermine the political regime, or will it allow it to “cover everyone with blood” and become more stable? And what are the possible scenarios for the continuation or end of the war in this situation?

Participating in the discussion are:

Pavel Luzin, military policy specialist, author of the Luzin: Russia in the World channel, visiting fellow at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, senior fellow at the Jamestown Foundation;

Sergei Lukashevsky, editor-in-chief of the channel “On the Country and the World”;

Boris Grozovsky, columnist, author of the EventsAndTexts telegram channel.

The conversation was organized by the telegram channel “About the country and the world”. The broadcast and video recording of the conversation will be available on the About the Country and the World YouTube channel.

This interview is republished from О стране и мире (About the Country and the World).