Hibernating Bear

Given the scope of operations in Ukraine, however, Moscow is unlikely to take on a large operation elsewhere. Russia’s loss of airborne early-warning aircraft, the less permissive international environment—especially the closure of the Turkish Straits to naval vessels, which makes it nearly impossible for Moscow to sustain significant deployments in the eastern Mediterranean region—and the degradation of Russian command and control, including the willingness of its senior leaders to simultaneously manage another major military action, are likely to inhibit Russian actions.

Such limits on Russian capacity, however, are unlikely to be decisive in shaping Moscow’s calculus on power projection. As history has shown, Russia has been willing to project power along its periphery even when the Russian military was at its weakest in the late 1990s and early 2000s. In early 2022, as President Vladimir Putin was preparing most of his ready ground forces to invade Ukraine, he carved out a detachment to deploy to Kazakhstan to bolster its president amid unrest.

Once the war in Ukraine ends, Russia’s great power strategic culture will remain unchanged, and its intent to challenge perceived U.S. unilateralism will persist and likely intensify. For that reason, Russia’s ability to project force beyond its borders will remain a core strategic priority. Russia’s capacity for power projection and the permissiveness of the environments in which they project power will also likely improve. Once the war in Ukraine winds down, Russia is likely to retain much of the basic military infrastructure it needs to project power abroad and where attrition has occurred, Russia’s defense industrial base—already operating at high tempo—will allow it to rapidly restore its capabilities. Any reduction in sanctions and/or export controls, lifting of restrictions on naval transit through the Turkish Straits, freed leadership attention, and reduced battlefield consumption of equipment will create a more permissive environment for power projection. Moreover, Russia will be well-positioned to leverage arms sales—which are likely to resume after the war—and operational know-how gained in Ukraine as instruments of influence, trading military technology, training, and advisory support for the access and political alignment that underpin effective power projection.

How the war in Ukraine ends matters. If Moscow emerges having weakened Ukraine militarily—imposing limits on its armed forces and securing a more compliant government—Russia would be able to reduce the scale of forces tied down on its western flank, freeing manpower, equipment, and leadership attention for use elsewhere, lowering the opportunity costs that have constrained parallel operations during the war. Europe’s posture after the war in Ukraine ends will shape where those freed resources would be directed. The Kremlin’s judgment that it can shape the outcome on the ground has long been a factor in its power projection calculus. If European governments fail to follow through on defense modernization and deterrence commitments, Moscow may judge the environment permissive enough to continue prioritizing Europe as the primary arena for advancing its great power ambitions.

Introduction

Prior to 2022, Russia was widely seen to be gaining geopolitical momentum. The 2014 annexation of Crimea, the intervention in eastern Ukraine and the continued conflict there, and especially the 2015 deployment to Syria—Russia’s first sustained expeditionary combat operation outside the post-Soviet space—all challenged assumptions about Moscow’s capabilities, risk tolerance, and ambitions. These operations prompted an analytic effort to better understand the Kremlin’s willingness to use military force to advance its foreign policy objectives. The pressing questions at the time centered on understanding the conditions under which Russia would intervene, its capabilities for doing so, and President Vladimir Putin’s personal appetite for risk. The dominant concern was not whether Russia would project power, but where it might do so next.¹

The debate has since shifted markedly. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine there has been a series of crises where Moscow opted not to intervene, despite significant challenges to its long-standing relationships and interests. Russia’s failure to challenge Azerbaijan’s consolidation of and control over Nagorno-Karabakh in 2023 and its limited efforts to protect its clients in Syria and Venezuela have fueled arguments that Moscow is no longer capable of defending its interests abroad.² Even more pointedly, the argument goes, Russia did very little to support Iran as it endured 12 days of punishing war at the hands of Israel and the United States in 2025 and then again in 2026 as the United States and Israel executed Operation Epic Fury to decapitate the regime—despite the deepening relationship between Russia and Iran over the course of the war in Ukraine. The central question has evolved: It is no longer where will Russia project power, but will Russia retain the capability to project power in a meaningful and sustained way?

The report examines this question. It assesses Russian power projection in the aftermath of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Before the war in Ukraine, Russia had credible but limited power projection capabilities. It was able to deploy discrete forces abroad and sustain selective operations that, even while falling well short of the scale, permanence, and global logistics architecture that underpin U.S. military reach, still often complicated U.S. military planning.

The report argues that the war in Ukraine has not fundamentally dismantled Russia’s power projection capabilities; instead, it has imposed a far stricter hierarchy of priorities, limiting Moscow’s willingness to take on additional risk that might detract from its priority efforts in Ukraine. The core pillars of Russia’s expeditionary reach—strategic airlift, long-range strike assets, logistic networks, and command structures—have not been structurally eliminated by the conflict. Although its losses in Ukraine have been significant in specific systems and in manpower, they have not entirely hollowed out the foundations of Russian mobility or reach. And where attrition has occurred, Russia’s defense industrial base—already operating at high tempo—will allow it to rapidly restore its capabilities.

What has changed more decisively are Moscow’s priorities and tolerance for additional risk. Putin currently views the world through the prism of Ukraine; he is unwilling to jeopardize his primary war effort or risk escalation that could produce simultaneous high-intensity contingencies. Yet, just because Russia did not act in Nagorno-Karabakh, Syria, Venezuela, or Iran does not mean that Russia will be unwilling to project power while the war continues. There remains a list of places—especially Belarus and the Arctic—where Russia would likely intervene militarily to protect its interests. Russia is also likely to sustain a spectrum of lower-intensity power projection activities while the war in Ukraine continues.

Russia is likely to retain much of the architecture necessary to resume global activity once its war in Ukraine ends—and how it ends will matter tremendously. The central analytical question is thus not whether Russia can project power again, but how will it prioritize competing theaters and will it reassert itself in visible ways across the global stage or concentrate its efforts on consolidating influence in Europe and Eurasia?

This report starts by defining power projection and Russian conceptions of it. It then identifies the pillars of Russian power projection—the key entities, units, and institutions that either enable power projection or that Moscow uses to project power abroad—and the factors that shaped Russian decision-making about when and where to project power prior to February 2022. The report then examines the effect of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on these capabilities and Moscow’s calculus on power projection. Finally, the report concludes by looking ahead at Russia’s approach to power projection after its war in Ukraine and lays out the key assumptions and factors that are most likely to shape Russia’s future approach.