An undeniable truth of all institutional structures is that in the long run, power and task management logics settle around them, tending to make all processes of the organism inflexible and difficult to change. In many respects this phenomenon is more the result of the increase in the average age of the officials and staff who carry out all the operations and who, consequently, tend to influence the strategies, the attempts at reform and the mentality of the whole body.
We could go on for hours without coming to a conclusion that would satisfy the palate of many interlocutors so we will just try to briefly apply what has just been said to the quiet changes that have taken place over the last few decades within the US and Russian armed forces with a view on a possible confrontation in Eastern Europe.
The Russians have had to deal with the political, economic and military collapse of the Soviet Union caused mainly by a dysfunctional expansion of the military dimension at the expense of the civilian one.
The atrophy of the communist civil economy coupled with a sense of defeat among Moscow's elites in the competition between the US and the Soviet Union meant that for almost twenty years the Bear's most important concern was to regain some form of international respectability and re-establish domestic order.
Famous in this respect is the damage done by the smuggling of Soviet equipment by various agents or ex-agents of the KGB and other agencies who, out of opportunism or to meet part of their institutional expenses, flooded black markets around the world with military goods that were difficult to obtain in any other way: including in some cases even nuclear warheads (we doubt that such devices can still be found).
The maintenance of internal order and, consequently, the restructuring of the armed forces is another matter.
The Russian Federation has already had several baptisms of fire in conflicts such as the war in Chechnya or in the Donbass and Crimea, but while the first was the expression of an internal clash within the federation itself and Moscow's turnaround against the centrifugal thrusts of some "provinces", the other two were a much more studied campaign that showed a well-oiled war machine a few years later, signalling successful attempts at reform and renewal of the armed forces.
The reform process continues to this day and has attracted the attention of many countries including China and the United States.
Many of the new capabilities of the Russian armed forces are intended to cover up old weaknesses and target the weak points of possible enemies. With a view to a conflict with NATO, the Kremlin has developed a strategy of rapid deployment followed by targeted bombardment with guided artillery systems and other medium-long range weapons with the aim of hitting both supply lines and a large proportion of armoured vehicles and aviation, while the various types of ground troops (mechanised, airborne...),central to the strategy of conquest and control of the battlefield, set up supply lines, coordinate attacks and target the front line in what would resemble the First World War. What the Russians are aiming for, however, is not a war of attrition forcing them to make a costly advance, but rather to gain a dominant position in the territory they are interested in (they tend to consider an area stretching from Lithuania down to a good chunk of the eastern sector of Ukraine) BEFORE NATO, through the US and perhaps France, Italy and the UK, have reinforcements on the ground. At this point, short- and medium-range nuclear warheads (quick to deploy and difficult to trace and intercept) come into play to deter counterattacks, together with A2/AD S-400 platforms capable of shooting down aircrafts such as F-35s or missiles of various types, creating a defensive dome.
The US has various means at its disposal to face a war against Russia but many of these are inadequate following the Kremlin's renewal and reforms. It does not make matters any better that the Americans are overextended around the world and that public opinion is increasingly fed up with the country's involvement in international conflicts.
The elephant in the room is the enormous number of soldiers that the Russian Federation has at its disposal - the active personnel of the army is one million and 14 thousand active from a reserve of two million (estimates suggest 800 thousand ready to fight and distributed in five macro sectors of the country) with an average age between 18 and 27 years - which, following the more limited numbers of the USA, forces Washington to focus on different logics and fall back on technological superiority.
This actually ends up creating a problem because the extent of Russian capabilities to disrupt the operation of many of the American platforms through ad hoc tools that are still being studied by the intelligence community is unclear.
The problem that arises with the emergence of asymmetric capabilities (literally how much the conformation of a military body with respect to the enemy relies on a tactic or weapon that clearly defines its operation on the battlefield and is not shared by the other side. The Americans have a monstrous air support capacity that is a legacy of the Second World War while the Russians rely on an overwhelming number of soldiers combined with the ability to destroy and or deny the use of support means) is not limited to influencing only a possible exchange between the Russians and the Americans of course, but also touches on a confrontation between Beijing and Washington.
This brings us to the discussion of the armed forces overseas.
The United States is still unmatched in military power, and many of the reports suggesting that China may be overtaking it ignore the capabilities the country can deploy in a coordinated attack by sea, land and air.
As we have already noted, however, the advantage Washington enjoys over Russia and China is not only shrinking but also suffering from a different form of attrition: it is strategically inadequate for the new face of warfare.
Drone systems, Artificial Intelligence, Quantum Computers, centralised command systems, supersonic missiles and reinventing the use of tactical nuclear devices are all being implemented in one way or another.
One of the very latest examples of the inadequacy of part of the US arsenal may have emerged in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict when a series of interconnected Azerbaijani drones (probably supplied by the Turks) used complex triangulation technology to inform ground troops of certain enemy movements and at the same time defend the central unit which was positioned a few hundred metres above and carried out missile launches in tandem with data sorties.
It later emerged that the technology would be similar to that developed by the Israelis in connection with the IAI Harpy puppet/suicide drone.
In particular, Washington's gaze is on Crimea and the Donbas, which has recently seen serious troop movements and the advanced deployment of the Ukrainian army in preparation for a full-scale conflict.
It is unclear how far Moscow is willing to go, but it is likely that the Kremlin believes Kiev is willing to go to war to regain lost territory and will consequently end up heavily damaging the country by seizing territory it needs.
The New York Times reports that a very large number of Russian troops and military assets are stationed on the border with Ukraine with the aim of influencing negotiations on a possible new Minsk agreement (an international treaty signed in 1991 that defines relations within the CIS organisation and between the Bear and the former Soviet satellite states), on a new agreement on the management of tensions in Donbass and, some suggest, to test the resolve of the new White House administration.
We sketched an initial analysis of a possible large-scale conflict in our 8 April report.
As for tensions go, we do not share the proposed narrative of a restrained Russia.
In our view the Kremlin is acutely aware of how the convergence of many historical trends goes against them, causing an acceleration of plans to redefine relations with the rest of the world.
-President Vladimir Putin may be forced to retire and, regardless of how real the retirement is, the event will have cascading consequences across multiple realities including military and diplomatic.
-The West (whether the term refers to European states or the United States) is slowly emerging from its condition of inertia and apathy.
-The balance of the oil markets is broken. Prices have returned to pseudo-normality, but it is clear what the weight of the American revolution in shale extraction is and the extent the power the Petrodollar has on the currency markets. Even after hyperinflationary phenomena, the US could have a strong influence on the global fossil fuel reality.
These reasons, combined with the Bear's desire to ensure adequate and sustainable future geopolitical stability with respect to its sharply declining demographic size are, in our view, very influential on Moscow's decision to press the accelerator for the absorption of the territories it needs. An armed clash seems neither inevitable nor immediate, but it is probable.
Much of what we have mentioned remains, in our view, valid if placed in the appropriate historical context.
However, we would like to add some corrections and point out some important developments.
The profiles for the invasion of Ukraine remain the same three, but with some different initial deployments depending on the type of operation the Kremlin decides to launch. The first and least risky would be the invasion of the Donbass and neighbouring regions. Much of the analysis in the 4/8/21 Roundup adhered to this projection of events but this profile may now be less likely as, according to some of the most reliable analysts, Putin would risk a partial loss of credibility if the spoils of a war in Eastern Europe were assessed as inadequate by the Russian elites.
Unfortunately this scenario seems realistic following the push at EU level for a different energy policy that does not see Russia in such a central role. In this respect we are not so sure that we can even blame President Biden for shooting himself in the foot with his push for renewables.
The manoeuvre will, in our view, fail, but it will still help energy markets to evolve (regardless of whether they collapse into widespread dysfunctionality or find a regional balance with heavy corrections) but it is not entirely responsible for the direction of events. It was the trigger for the anxieties of some Russian oligarchs, but the insecurities were already more or less present and in perspective other realities alone could have put a section of Putin's inner circle on notice.
The second invasion profile would concern all regions of Ukraine with a significant Russian minority. If, as we suspect, Moscow prefers to cut things with a hatchet in this case, we imagine that Ukraine's future will be that of a landlocked country (Fig. 2 gives a better idea).
Fig.1 (Data from 2001)
Fig.2 (Data from 2001) General percentages of individuals who speak russian as their mother tounge or use it regularly in the region
Finally, the third invasion profile, which we consider highly unlikely for reasons that we will analyse in a moment, would be that of the entire territory.
If this last possibility were to materialise, a Russian attack could take shape through the irradiated zone of Prypiat (Chernobyl would be problematic), very close to the capital Kiev, to decapitate the military and civilian leadership. At the same time troops on the north-eastern border and from Crimea would advance inland.
We doubt that Moscow is aiming for a full invasion of Ukraine because this could have consequences for the stability of its own territory.
For some years now, part of the country's population has been trained in urban guerrilla warfare and armed resistance activities. Newspapersshowed interested in this development only now, but already in 2004 Ukraine showed a strong presence of right-wing (and other) militias active in various contexts - often used as an armed wing for operations aimed at influencing the national political dimension by the Russians themselves - including the so-called Dignity Revolution of 2014.
Obviously, it is important to distinguish between paramilitary groups, often born after the collapse of the Soviet Union, with strong contacts with Slavic criminal organisations (among other things central to the somewhat ramshackle resistance to a slow Russian invasion on the border with Donbass), and sleeper cells in the civilian population trained by the regular army.
In the event of an invasion, however, we doubt that individual players will prove too “demanding”. On the contrary, as we mentioned, the Russians might face sabotage and problems with extremist groups on their own territory.
This is another reason why Ukraine is seen by many, particularly the Russian elites, as a country irretrievably in the hands of corrupt oligarchies who swing from one position to another (in this case in favour of the US or Russia) in search of the highest bidder.
Be that as it may, beyond the local Ukrainian dimension and the media chaos, a possible painless direction is immediately apparent for Moscow.
The Kremlin could agree to continue weakening the buffer states it is most concerned about (Ukraine, Georgia, Belarus, Armenia) without excessively abrupt manoeuvres so as to make them, if not dependent on Russia, at least incapable of stark autonomy.
