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.

  • Podcast
    • December 6, 2024
    Turmoil in Paris and Berlin Going into a Second Trump Term

    Earlier this week, France’s government collapsed following a successful no-confidence vote from left-wing and far-right lawmakers. This political crisis comes on the heels of ...

    By Andrea Kendall-Taylor, Jim Townsend, Tara Varma & Liana Fix

  • Podcast
    • November 22, 2024
    Trump and the War in Ukraine with Michael Kofman and Robert Lee

    More than 1000 days into the War in Ukraine, questions about continued support for the Ukrainian effort and the prospect of a negotiated settlement in the months to come have ...

    By Andrea Kendall-Taylor, Jim Townsend, Rob Lee & Mike Kofman

  • Video
    • November 21, 2024
    RUSI Recording: The Impact of the U.S. Presidential Election on European Security

    Jim Townsend, an adjunct senior fellow in the CNAS Transatlantic Security Program, joins RUSI to discuss the impact the next US presidential administration will have on NATO, ...

    By Jim Townsend

  • Commentary
    • Sharper
    • November 20, 2024
    Sharper: Trump 2.0

    Donald Trump's return to the White House is widely expected to reshape America's global priorities. With personnel choices and policy agendas that mark a significant break fro...

    By Charles Horn & Gwendolyn Nowaczyk

View All Reports View All Articles & Multimedia