Military analyst KofmanMichael on why Russia continues to struggle on the battlefield, the chances of a Ukrainian breakthrough, and the futility of searching for a military silver bullet. A conversation with realaxelfoley
, the director of Russian studies at the research institute CNA, about why Russia continues to struggle on the battlefield, the chances of a Ukrainian breakthrough, and the futility of searching for a military silver bullet.
Neither the Russian or the Ukrainian military today is what it was at the beginning of the war. Both forces have taken significant losses — to manpower, to equipment. The Russian military cannot make substantial territorial gains., you said that the timing of this onslaught could work to Ukraine’s advantage. Can you explain why?
has taken command. I have a decidedly low opinion of his military leadership. From the outset of this war, he hasn’t demonstrated himself to be particularly competentGerasimov is attempting to throw the Russian military at Ukraine far too early. The quality of the force is insufficient to conduct an effective offensive or at least appears insufficient. They’re probably going to need the artillery ammunition they’re employing now in order to defend in the spring.
What rarely gets mentioned is that it takes a lot of training to make the best use of that capability, that complexity comes with its own price, and that Ukraine inheriting a large, variegated fleet of armored fighting vehicles of different types is going to create tremendous challenges for maintenance and logistics, much the same way inheriting 14, perhaps even more, different types of artillery did last summer.
My impression is that Chinese leadership may be deliberating making a change in their policy and providing overt military support. I think it’s fair to say that over the past year, China has sought to hedge, but has generally been supportive of Russia. And one area where there’s good data on this is that Russia has realigned its supply chains of integrated circuits, and a significant percentage of them are now either imported from China or shipped through China and Hong Kong.
The concern has subsided, but the overall risk has not significantly changed. Just because folks aren’t talking about it doesn’t mean this has gone away. For policy-makers and others for whom escalation management is an enduring imperative in this war, the potential risk of Russian nuclear escalation — let’s say if there’s a cascading collapse of the Russian armed forces to the Ukrainian breakthrough in the south — hasn’t changed significantly at all.
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