Pavel Luzin: Russia has catastrophically underestimated the strength of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the Ukrainian state and society
Featuring an interview with Pavel Luzin, Visiting Scholar at the Fletcher Russia and Eurasia Program
November 19 marks the thousandth day of Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine. In October 2024, the Voice of America talked with Pavel Luzin, a researcher at Tufts University, about how this war began and continues and what can force Russia to end its aggression.
Voice of America: How did Russia’s war against Ukraine begin?
Pavel Luzin: If we look at the development of the situation more broadly, the war began in 2014, and in 2022 a full-scale invasion began. We must recall the Novorossiya project, which was supposed to include all regions of Ukraine — from Kharkov to Odessa, that is, to cut off Ukraine from the sea and the remnants of Ukraine were either to turn into Russian-controlled or disappear.
Back in 2014, there were voices inside Russia, not only from fanatics like Malofeev (Konstantin Malofeev, chairman of the Board of directors of the Tsargrad Group of Companies — ed.), who even then called for a full-scale war against Ukraine, but these were all kinds of representatives of the near-Putin oligarchy. We know about this from the published leaks from their e-mail correspondence.
Unfortunately, I personally heard in 2014 or 2015 the regrets of various people that “oh, it was necessary to move tanks to Lviv!”. But the tanks did not move in 2014, the tanks moved in 2022.
Russia’s goal was clear – the destruction of Ukrainian statehood and Ukrainian culture.
And there is a more global goal that Russia declares through the mouths of its high–ranking officials – it is to undermine the existing international order that has developed since 1991. This is undermining American political and economic leadership.
The key to this disruption was supposed to be the disintegration of NATO, that is, formally, the alliance could possibly continue to exist, but, according to Kremlin strategists, it should have been unable to ensure European security.
A split within this alliance is welcome for Russia, and we can see it in the rhetoric of some leaders of Eastern European countries. We see that there is no reinforced concrete unity in the alliance, and there are NATO member countries ready to do business with Russia, ready to defend Russia, defend its positions, not only within the framework of NATO, but also within the framework of the European Union, to put sticks in the wheels when approving some pan-European decisions.
This is a large–scale task – and for this, by the way, the Russian Constitution was rewritten in 2020. There is a block of amendments in it, which is often overlooked by many observers who relate to local government. According to these amendments, local self-government becomes part of a unified system, a public authority, that is, it loses its autonomy.
Exactly the same formulations regarding self-government are contained, for example, in the Constitution of Belarus, exactly the same formulations were contained in the constitutions of the so-called “DNR” and “LNR”: some kind of unification took place.
In addition, it is still unclear why the role of the State Council, which has existed since the beginning of 2000, as a quasi-broadcasting body, was separately prescribed in the Constitution.
It seems that Russia was preparing the institutional ground for a new union state, where Russia and Belarus are already part of this union state, which is still virtual, but the absorption of Belarus in economic terms is happening right now. Because Russia is actually putting the remaining economic assets in Belarus under control.
Although the Belarusian army retains autonomy, since 2022 we have seen that Belarus is absolutely not independent in many decisions regarding the use of its territory for attacks on Ukraine.
Perhaps Ukraine was supposed to be included in this new union state. After all, even the “DPR” and “LPR” were annexed, along with part of the Zaporozhye region and the Kherson region, only in September 2022.
Most likely, the plan was that Russia wanted to put its own person in Kiev, who would sign the union treaty.
It should have looked like Vladimir Putin and the State Council should have been at the head of the Union State, but the countries belonging to the union state could have been headed by someone else. The president of Russia could be Mishustin or Belousov, it doesn’t matter.
And this union state was supposed to be above everything, because there is an ideological basis for this. The Russian regime has an ideology of hyperethatism dating back to Plato.
This ideology also includes the historical mission to restore the empire – the USSR, although not within the same borders. This has been talked about at various levels over the years.
This was a motivated task, including for the Russian elite, especially its power wing. And they tried to implement it – and, judging by what we know, they were the main planners of the war against Ukraine.
The General Staff played a secondary role in planning the invasion. The primary role, apparently, was played by the FSB, the Chekists.
We know about this, for example, from the text of retired Colonel Mikhail Khodorenko, who worked at the General Staff and wrote an appeal to bloodthirsty political scientists two or three weeks before February 24 that you should not start a war that you cannot win.
And, most likely, through him, his former colleagues who remained at the General Staff tried to convey this idea to the Kremlin, because they could no longer reach through formal channels.
This is also the appeal of Leonid Ivashov, who cannot be suspected of liberalism – he warned against war, and most likely, through him the military personnel also tried to reach the Kremlin.
Russia could not win this war and catastrophically underestimated the ability and strength of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the Ukrainian state and society, as well as catastrophically overestimated its own capabilities.
During the first months of the full-scale invasion, the hope remained that reason would prevail after all, and ideologically motivated fanaticism would be less stable. It was possible to retreat in March, May or June. It was possible to retreat in the first week of September after the first Ukrainian counteroffensive. But none of this happened. On the contrary, mobilization was announced, escalation began, and there was an attempt to put the squeeze on.
And in 2022, the whole of 2023, and now almost the whole of 2024, Russia is still trying to put the squeeze on, but it is not working!
And more and more resources are being thrown into the furnace of war. Since for the Russian elite this is already such a goal–setting inertia – when trillions of rubles and hundreds of thousands of lives have already been poured into the war, it is no longer possible to retreat, because the question will arise: who will be responsible for this?
Russia has burned the resources that it has been saving up not only since 2011, when a large state rearmament program was adopted – Russia has burned a resource that it has been saving more or less diligently since the collapse of the USSR.
Because all these depopulated bases for storing military equipment were Soviet reserves.
These reserves were saved with the idea of revenge, which arose long before Vladimir Putin came to power. Putin was still carrying a suitcase for Sobchak, and the idea of revenge had already been born. It was not dominant then, but it was gaining momentum. And by the end of the 1990s, against the background of the NATO operation against Yugoslavia in the spring of 1999, this idea became dominant.
From 1999 to 2007, Russia tried to maneuver, accumulate fat, but since 2007, this has transformed from an idea into a program of action.
Voice of America: What can you identify as the main stages of Russia’s war against Ukraine?
Pavel Luzin: The first stage is from the beginning of a full–scale invasion on February 24, 2022 to September 21, 2022 and the beginning of mobilization.
This is the period when the Russian professional army was exhausted.
Russia was preparing all these 168 battalion tactical groups with the idea of an army that was supposed to be similar to the American one in Iraq in 1991, in Afghanistan in 2001 or in Iraq in 2003. And this army, in fact, was destroyed: someone was killed, someone was injured, someone resigned, when there was an even greater wave of dismissals from the army.
In parallel, there was a process of moral decomposition of the army, which began in Bucha, Irpen and continued in Mariupol. Let’s not forget about the destruction of a large number of Ukrainian prisoners of war in Yelenovka.
There was moral decay, that is, the army disappeared – the army that the Soviet military leaders had planned to create during the period of Perestroika. And the army that the Russian government tried to create in the late 1990s, which was more or less created by 2010, was destroyed in a few months of the war in Ukraine.
The second stage is from September 21, 2021 to May 2023, when Russia had great hope for the mobilized and that the West would not be united in supporting Ukraine, and the Russian military–industrial complex would accelerate greatly.
It was expected that this mass of rearmed mobilized would be able to inflict a tangible defeat on the Ukrainian army on the battlefield, and force Ukraine to sit down at the negotiating table and ask for a break – but this did not succeed.
Russia needed a break to lick its wounds. According to various estimates, in 2023, it would take Russia from 5 to 9 years to recover.
The next stage is the end of May–June 2023, the beginning of the Ukrainian counteroffensive, which many consider to have failed, but I do not think so.
I believe that the Ukrainian counteroffensive in the form in which it was conceived simply did not take place, because Russia blew up the Kakhovskaya hydroelectric power station, which, in my humble opinion, thwarted the main attack of the Ukrainian troops across the Dnieper.
Accordingly, this plan failed and the “plan B” began: from June 2023 it lasted until August 2024 and, to a large extent, it continues now.
This is a plan to exhaust Russia. When the main blow did not take place, Ukraine increased pressure in the east of Ukraine and began targeting Russian artillery, air defense, if possible, the command staff of Russian troops, which we see from the loss statistics.
According to these statistics, by today we can note a multiple increase in Russian losses in military equipment, which is difficult to produce and which forms the basis of Russian military strategy, and we are not even talking about armored vehicles and artillery, but also about air defense systems, etc.
The Ukrainian army is focused on destroying all this and is doing it unsuccessfully, exhausting the Russian army, destroying equipment that Russia cannot reproduce now.
But, nevertheless, Russia continues to inflict painful defeats on the Ukrainian army, such as in Avdiivka or Volchansk.
Despite the fact that many observers say that Ukraine is losing territories, and Russia is seizing them and continuing to advance, it is necessary to pay attention to Russia’s military plan.
The task of the Russian army is not to capture Avdiivka or Chas Yar, but to surround a large grouping of AFU troops, create a “cauldron” to demoralize the Ukrainian army and society and force Ukraine to sit down at the negotiating table.
That is, Russia is trying to reproduce the situation of the Ilovaisk boiler in August 2014 and the Debaltseve boiler in February 2015, but it does not succeed. The Russians capture the ruins, but they do not surround anyone and suffer losses.
Ukraine’s task is to use fortified areas to “grind down” as much as possible not the professional Russian army, but the mass of mobilized and volunteers who now make up the Russian armed forces.
I want to recall Henryk Sienkiewicz’s novel “Fire and Sword”, where the action takes place in the 17th century in similar spaces, and where the role of fortresses in the steppe and river-crossed terrain is very clearly visible.
And although the fortress almost always falls, it fulfills its task – to gain time and exhaust the enemy.
For example, Avdiivka, as a fortress, was held from February 2022 to February 2024, and fulfilled its role. Or the small town of Ugledar, which Russia has been trying to take since March 2023, which also fulfilled its task, where, as before in the autumn of 2022 in Bakhmut, the Russian army lost thousands of people killed. In Bakhmut, Russian losses amounted to about 60 thousand people.
Ukraine uses the tactic of exchanging pieces of territory, which are essentially a desert, where there is no economic activity and there are practically no people, for the irreparable losses of the Russian army.
This tactic continued until August 2024, when the Ukrainian Armed Forces demonstrated that they still know how to conduct large offensive operations (in the Kursk region of Russia – ed.), the level of which is much higher and qualitatively better than the first counteroffensive of the Ukrainian army in September 2022 in the Kharkiv region.
In addition, fighting is also taking place in the Belgorod region of Russia, which often falls out of sight because the scale there is much smaller, but we see from reports, even Russian reports, that there are some Ukrainian positions there.
It is difficult to say what will happen next, but we know that from May to September 2024, the Russian army suffered maximum losses. If the APU manages to inflict losses on Russia at the current level, then probably even the North Korean military, North Korean shells and Iranian drones and missiles will not help Russia much, which relies heavily on the stock of Soviet weapons, which is being depleted.
My colleagues and I made estimates in the spring and came to the conclusion that, with the level of losses remaining in the spring of 2024, the critical depletion of Russian military reserves will occur no later than 2035.
That is, Russia will have nothing to take from these bases, and it simply will not be able to make up for the loss of weapons. Because the production of any type of weapons from scratch is unable to quickly replace them, it will take decades to compensate for these losses.
Judging by the speeches of Russian leaders, pro-Russian experts and some politicians in the West, Russia really needs a break now.
Voice of America: What can happen next in Russia and Ukraine?
Pavel Luzin: Russia does not have a regular army now, because even all numbered regiments, divisions, brigades are understaffed.
All sorts of assault companies and stuff, these are just consolidated units: two or three battalions have gathered people who do not know each other by name.
There is a redistribution of military personnel from other types of branches of the armed forces, which are absolutely unsuitable for action on the battlefield. Foreigners are being tricked into service – from Nigeria, Nepal, and Tajikistan. They are lured to Russia, forced to sign a contract, taking advantage of their lack of education and ignorance. They promise them that they will build something in Mariupol, but they find themselves with machine guns on the front line, die en masse or surrender, and then ask the governments of their countries to take them away.
The same thing happens with the command staff. We see that Russia has people in non-commissioned positions who are intellectually unfit to be sergeants. People who do not have a higher education, who have not served in the army or have served lowercase service are appointed to lieutenant positions. And if someone has a higher education, he is appointed a second lieutenant, and people with naval officer ranks are found in motorized rifle divisions.
That is, all this suggests that the Russian army is no longer a regular army, it is a combined hodgepodge in which conditionally volunteer formations, all sorts of “Akhmats” and so on are cooked.
It’s like Hamas or Hezbollah, who have a desire to die and continue the war. This does not make them less dangerous opponents, but it does not make them regular armies that are able to destroy the State of Israel. Also, the Russian army is not capable of destroying Ukraine now.
The Russians are trying to create pressure, and Russia has a new attack of terror against the civilian population of Ukraine again. It would seem, why? – And because they have already done it in Syria, and even earlier – in Georgia and Chechnya.
By destroying civilian infrastructure, they create a flood of refugees, which is demoralizing. When people leave the country, the question arises: who will protect it? But in Russia, for some reason, they underestimate the fact that those people who left Ukraine and earn money in Europe or in the United States can donate much more, for example, for weapons for Ukraine.
The scale of this assistance, of course, is not comparable to what the United States, Germany and other major donors to Ukraine represent, but it is very significant. Especially in terms of drones, equipment, and possibly weapons. The bill is already running into billions of dollars.
Russia is trying to terrorize Ukrainian society: it bombs hospitals, power plants, residential buildings in order to reduce the population located on the territory of Ukraine. (The Russian leaders) believe that this will help them achieve a result and persuade Ukraine to negotiate on Russia’s terms.
But the Russian course has another problem: what to do with people who have received PTSD who will return if Russia gets a break. It could also trigger a wave of violence in the country.
As for Ukraine, first of all, do not underestimate the number of Ukrainian troops. The situation is not as critical as it sometimes seems.
Of course, any army has its own problems, not all commanders are equally high-class. And people make mistakes, but the question is whether they can learn from mistakes.
So far, we see that Ukraine is managing to learn from its own mistakes. Not without the help of Western partners, the Armed Forces of Ukraine have learned to carry out rotations, because soldiers should not spend all their time in a combat zone when only part of the units are on the front line, one part is delayed, and the other part is waiting to be put into battle. The rest are doing some kind of work in the rear or resting.
In addition, a significant part of the Ukrainian army is being trained to work on new equipment, which also requires resources and time.
But in Russia, manpower without rotation is constantly in the combat zone and has very little rest.
The problem of manpower for the Armed Forces of Ukraine is that it must be attracted.
The problem of manpower in Russia is obvious when Putin in June 2024 says that 700 thousand people are in the zone of their military operations in the theater of operations, and then it turns out that in August hundreds of conscripts are being captured in the Kursk region. Because there are no 700 thousand military personnel.
At the current level of losses, Russia needs to recruit from 20 to 30 thousand people per month. We do not know what is happening now, but Russia’s maximum losses occurred during a period when we do not know how much it is recruiting.
But now the race for the amount of payments for the conclusion of the contract continues. Since 2024, the practice of involving persons under investigation and not even prisoners in hostilities has begun, because the economy of the Federal Penitentiary Service will already begin to suffer. But then it was a spontaneous practice, and now a law has been passed that the defendant can sign a contract before the trial, that is, the recruiters are operatives, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and investigators of the Investigative Committee.
Given this salary race for the conclusion of a contract for military service, the involvement of defendants, the use of the North Korean military, everything suggests that recruitment in Russia is not all right and they are trying to plug holes with just anyone.
And the old way remains – to involve conscripts in a larger volume than before, for example in the Kursk region, because Russian society did not respond to this. There was, of course, some surprise in society, but it turned out that conscripts could be used on a larger scale.
But conscripts and conscripts are equally poorly trained people.
In the case of conscripts, although you take future workers out of the economy, but 18-20-year-olds work somewhere in grassroots positions, which is not so sensitive for the economy. And if you recruit more or less qualified middle-level workers, aged 30-35 years, then the economy suffers.
Now Russia is trying to attract those under investigation, but perhaps in the spring the authorities will have to make a decision: to carry out a new wave of mobilization or to attract conscripts. We do not know what decision has been made, but we see that in general the number of recruits has increased.
According to the results of the autumn draft and taking into account the spring draft, 280,000 people will be drafted into the army, when in 2022 about 260,000 were drafted into the Russian army at the end of the year.
20,000 is a significant increase in the number of personnel, and we do not yet know how many conscripts sign a contract.
Voice of America: What are the most likely scenarios for the end of the war?
Pavel Luzin: It’s hard to say. The fact is that Ukraine is solving the main task: the elimination of the Russian threat and the return of territories is, as it were, a derivative of solving the main task. Russia must stop threatening Ukraine’s existence.
No one cares what happens in Russia, but it should stop being a threat to Ukraine and then the issue of the return of territories will be resolved. Therefore, one of the scenarios is that Russia will run out, maybe not in December 2024, but somewhere before the end of 2025, and will lose the ability to continue the war in its current form. And this is evident even from the polls that are conducted in Russia. This is evident from the reactions of Russian society. Even at the desire of Russian society to go into internal migration, to escape from it: “the war is going on somewhere, but I am not participating.” Tens of millions have abstracted, but they do not express their position in any way.
If this scenario of Russia’s exhaustion is realized, then I do not know how it will be framed politically and whether there will be a change of power in Russia.
But there is a historical example of Saddam Hussein, who, after a very painful defeat in 1991, retained power for another 12 years, although Iraq was degraded and impoverished. Or Muammar Gaddafi, who, after the defeat in Chad, was in power for almost more than 20 years, until his own people killed him.
That is, defeat does not mean the collapse of the regime. In addition, it is necessary to take into account the nature of the Russian regime. I am a big opponent of the concept of a personalistic regime and do not believe that it exists.
Vladimir Putin is not the only such “genius of politics”. We are dealing with a group of people, Putinism originated before Vladimir Putin and will easily survive it. Even if there is some kind of change of power, this does not mean that Russia will suddenly become a peaceful, democratic country. Even Prigozhin’s incident in June 2023 says this – he was not an independent figure. Wagner was funded from the state budget, which means there was an agency that supervised Prigozhin.
The Russian regime can be stable because a group of people in power has the will to retain power at any cost.
Russia is institutionally on its way to a failed state. Russian authoritarianism has a visible dysfunction, which is expressed in the fact that people have stopped doing their duty and are waiting for orders – they do not act without orders.
We saw this during the Prigozhin rebellion, during the terrorist attack in Crocus City, during the initial phase of the Ukrainian offensive in the Kursk region. They simply refused to do their duty, not only the military – the governor and the government of the Kursk region were unable to do anything, the federal government was unable to do anything, Vladimir Putin did nothing. At that time, he opened a hospital in Perm using Zoom. That is, it is an institutional dysfunction.
Against the background of institutional dysfunction and the will of the Russian leadership to maintain its power, there may be some transformations at the level of institutions in Russia, but this does not mean that democratization will take place.
Russia has signed a strategic cooperation agreement with North Korea. A permanent member of the UN Security Council kisses passionately with the main violator of all international sanctions and the international order, which indicates that Russia has made its choice: she is moving towards totalitarianism and is unlikely to be saved.
The next option is: if Russia is able to get a break on the battlefield and the front line stabilizes, everyone digs in, periodically fire at each other, but no one is advancing anywhere.
But if Russia tries to lick its wounds, put some units and formations in order, and prepare for a new round of war, what will it do with this mass of idiots, criminals who now make up the backbone of its troops, where will they all run away and what will happen inside the country? – In short, a respite does not promise stability.
Many people talk about the “Korean” or “German” scenario, where the United States was the guarantor on the one hand, and the Soviet Union and China on the other hand. In 1950-53, the Soviet Union was passionate about the redistribution of power within the Soviet bloc, and the guarantee of stability along the 38th parallel (on the Korean Peninsula) was in its interests. The same is true in Germany – the two camps guaranteed the stability of the partition of Germany.
But who will guarantee stability in Ukraine? Russia is incapable because it is unable to comply with the rules it subscribes to: she freezes the treaty, then withdraws the ratification, then simply violates it…
Russia is unable to follow the rules formulated on any piece of paper with a Russian signature. This is a dysfunction at the level of institutions – a state that is unable to function is organically unable to play by the rules of international politics.
China is not going to act as a guarantor, nor is North Korea and Iran. I just don’t understand how such a scenario can be implemented.
This post has been translated from Russian.
(This post is republished from The Russian Service of the Voice of America.)