When senior British officers visited Moscow in the days before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Russian Chief of General Staff Valery Gerasimov boasted that he commanded the world’s second most powerful army. A week after the conflict began, however, the Russian military is performing terribly. The difference between the expectations of the Russian military and its actual results shows what it has learned and what it has not learned in the last 14 years of military modernization and how it is likely to continue its war in Ukraine.
Following its unsatisfactory combat performance during the 2008 invasion of Georgia, the Russian military has embarked on a lengthy rearmament program. Russia pours about $ 159 billion a year into its armed forces, measured on the basis of purchasing power parity (PPP). This created a force with a huge fleet of upgraded main battle tanks, artillery, air defenses and long-range cruise and ballistic missiles. While in the Cold War the Soviet army expected to rely on nuclear weapons to win any conflict with high intensity, the modern Russian army sought to fight with speed and precision.
In parallel with this rearmament, there was an increase in the conceptual significance of non-lethal military activity. Obsessed with “color revolutions,” the Russian military set out to use intelligence officers and special forces to try to divide hostile societies from within. The theory was that if enemy forces could be turned against themselves, if information could be controlled, and if trust in a country’s leaders could be undermined, then victory could be achieved with minimal use of force.
Russia’s military operations in 2008 have somewhat confirmed Russia’s expectations. In Crimea in 2014, the combination of information operations and speed led to the conquest of the peninsula almost without a fight. In the Donbass region and in Syria, the Russian military found itself in limited conflicts against enemies who could not effectively retaliate. In Syria, this is due to the limited capabilities of the Syrian opposition. In Donbass, this is due to the fact that Ukraine has been politically deterred by decisive counterattacks from the threat of escalation. In these combat laboratories, Russia practiced the integration of electronic warfare and artillery, began to link its special forces and its air forces, and demonstrated that it could produce and use precision weapons.
However, it is important to note the limitations of Russia’s experience in Donbass and Syria. First, the scale of Russian operations in both countries was small. The Russian Air Force may have bombed hospitals accurately, but it did so by flying two to four planes a day against an enemy with very limited air defenses. Russian ground forces rarely operated in larger formations of groups of several hundred. These were also disproportionately special units or mercenaries. They were not always brave, but they were psychologically prepared for battle.
The invasion of Ukraine is a very different war. Russia has deployed more than 190,000 troops against the Ukrainian military of more than 200,000 troops and many more volunteers. Simply preventing units from getting involved in huge traffic jams requires a feat of planning and coordination. Against an enemy with air force and air defense, Russian pilots must fly low, at night, and still synchronize the transitions of many planes against their targets without colliding with each other. To do this reliably, a lot of experience and training is needed. While some Russian units are very experienced, the skills of the forces they have sent to Ukraine vary considerably.
However, the reason for Russia’s military failure in Ukraine lies in its insensitivity to human life, Ukrainian and Russian. During the war in Donbass, the families of Russian soldiers killed in battle were told that their relatives had died in training accidents. In Syria, Russia has organized the deployment of civilian infrastructure to break the will of the resistance, while waging a relentless propaganda campaign against civilian medical organizations trying to save lives.
For the Ukrainian people, looking at what Russia has done with Syria and Donbass, the will to resist is strong. Putin described the war as a correction of a historical mistake that led to Ukraine’s existence. The struggle is seen by Ukrainians as existential. Consequently, Russia’s attempts to divide Ukrainian society have failed.
Russia’s ruthless treatment of its own troops, albeit covertly on a small scale, has now led to operational consequences. After not telling her troops that they were about to go to war, her army was left unprepared, logistically and psychologically. Morality is low, which limits the fighting power of Russian forces. With too little planning time, Russian logistics and communications are in disarray, slowing the pace of progress. This gives the Ukrainians a lot of time to prepare their defenses and organize long-term resistance.
Unfortunately, the failure of Russia’s initial strikes on Ukraine means that it has now returned to its more traditional dependence on heavy artillery and surrounding Ukrainian cities. This shelling is indiscriminate and systematic. The goal is to break the will of military and civilian defenders by depriving them of water and food and killing them with fires. This is currently being done against Kharkiv and Mariupol, and the Russians are trying to position themselves to attack Kyiv in a similar way. Putin has set out to reunite a nation. Instead, he makes a desert and calls it peace.