April 28, 2022
Start with the Political: Explaining Russia's Bungled Invasion Of Ukraine
This article was originally published by War on the Rocks.
Many of us who analyze the Russian military for a living have been shocked to see Russian forces fumble the way they have in Ukraine. There are already some heated calls for analytical accountability, most prominently from Eliot Cohen and Phillips Payson O’Brien, into how the body of Russian military analysts could have gotten the Russian military so wrong. There is no doubt that the Russian military has performed much more poorly than most anticipated and it is important to understand why. However, observers should beware of drawing simplistic, overarching conclusions about Russian military power writ large.
The stage was set by Moscow’s inaccurate and chauvinistic assumptions about Ukraine, its leaders, its military, and its people.
One can lump Russian military failure into two large categories: those that are contingent to the current conflict and set of circumstances surrounding the invasion, and those that are inherent to the Russian military. Based on my experience as an analyst of the Russian military and former member of the National Security Council staff during the Obama administration, I focus here on the former: those contingent political factors that have contributed to the Russian military’s poor performance. I plan to follow this up with another article on those failures inherent to the Russian armed forces.
Read the full article from War on the Rocks.
More from CNAS
-
The Axis of Upheaval
Commentary
The West has been too quick to dismiss the coordination among China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia....
By Andrea Kendall-Taylor & Richard Fontaine
-
Trump allows US-Ukraine aid bill to pass
Video
“He did not jump in there to support that minority, and they went down”. Donald Trump made “positive” statements about Ukraine on social media posts and did not support the R...
By Jonathan Lord
-
The State of the War in Ukraine with Michael Kofman
Podcast
As the war in Ukraine continues into its third year, the mood has become increasingly dark. While territorial changes continue to be minor, Russia’s slow but steady advances a...
By Andrea Kendall-Taylor, Jim Townsend & Michael Kofman
-
Sharper: NATO 75
Commentary
From July 9–11, NATO leaders from across the Atlantic will gather in Washington, DC for the 2024 NATO Summit, which marks the 75th anniversary of the alliance. This meeting wi...
By Anna Pederson, Anna Avanesyan & Charles Horn
