Understanding Russia’s military vulnerabilities

By Pavel Luzin and others (Luzin is a visiting scholar of the Russia and Eurasia Program at The Fletcher School)

Abstract:

• This paper draws preliminary conclusions about Russia’s warfighting capabilities based on the 12 months since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
• The first year of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has exposed key aspects of Russian ground capabilities, several of which the Russian military had itself previously observed but did not successfully address. It is important to separate the consequences of Russia’s poor choices in this war from systemic Russian weaknesses – but those same systemic weaknesses will preclude Russian forces from quickly and effectively rectifying their mistakes.
• The threats to Western airpower, and therefore to the viability of NATO’s conventional deterrence strategy against Russia, have always been Russia’s ground-based integrated air defence system (IADS) and long-range precision strike capabilities. Both of those have performed broadly as expected in Ukraine.
• Western sanctions must be better adapted to the nature of the maritime industry: many systems – such as propulsion, sensors and navigation – are still classed as civilian items under the current set of export restrictions.
• There is still no significant evidence that Russia is trying to reconsider its basic approach towards electronic warfare (EW). Moreover, known EW exercises in 2022–23 focused solely on the tactical defence of frontline positions and command points from adversary units, reconnaissance, and combat unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and loitering munitions.
• US and NATO defence planners should pay close attention to how adversaries like Russia and possibly China develop and use artificial intelligence (AI) to augment their advantage in mass – the ability to mass firepower and manpower to overwhelm the adversary – as well as exploring what types of existing and new defences can be effective against such developments.
• Making the Kremlin fail faster on the battlefield is the most effective way to penetrate and disrupt the Russian information space and exacerbate the damage control burden on the Kremlin, as battlefield setbacks will increase the perception–reality gap that the Kremlin’s information operations must bridge. The Kremlin cannot pivot rapidly in the information space, but a reprieve on the battlefield provides an opportunity for the Kremlin to adapt its narratives and leverage its ability to manipulate perceptions.

Read the full paper here.

(This post is republished from Chatham House.)